Benzema is blowing out 35 candles today. And on his birthday he immediately made an important decision: he will stop with the national team.
“I have made the effort and made mistakes to be where I am now. And I am proud. I have written my story, ours ends now,” he writes with a photo in the French shirt.
Benzema has a complicated relationship with the national team. At the last World Cup he had to drop out with an injury just before the first group match. Later in the tournament there were several rumors about a possible return of the striker, but that did not happen in the end.
The French national coach laughed off those rumors, and Benzema would also have refused an invitation to watch the final in the stands. There would have been a hair in the butter between him and Deschamps because Benzema would have preferred to stay at the World Cup.
In the past, too, there was a lot to do around Benzema as an international. For example, he was not there at the World Cup in 2010 and between 2015 and 2021 after a riot around teammate Mathieu Valbuena. He would have urged Valbuena to pay his blackmailers. They threatened to spread intimate images. Benzema was convicted for his role in that soap opera.
But Deschamps eventually brought him back into the selection. He was there at the European Championship in 2021 and played a total of 95 times for France.
