Benzema – France striker with penchant for goals and barnstorming runs

May 29th, 2008 | by: jeff |

France striker Karim Benzema has cruelly exposed several defenses this season. In addition to being named the best player in France’s Ligue 1 for the 2007-08 season, he’s also been included in the France Euro 2008 squad of 23 players. The player likes to drop deep to collect the ball; he runs right at defenders, and he’s clinical in front of goal; a striker on par with Didier Drogba or Ruud van Nistlerooy, but more useful in the buildup than those two. He’ll be sharing the attacking limelight this summer with Franck Ribery, France’s attacking winger who’s been in fantastic form this season with Bayern Munich.

France World Cup Blog RSS Feed

Aditya

In terms of finishing I wouldn’t say he is on par with Drogba or Van Nistelrooy just yet. But he is improving significantly and shall be a goal scoring option for France. I have a feeling Domenech is going to pair Henry and Anelka as starters.
Benjamin

I remember a few year ago, i knew benzema was gonna be a great.
and here he is, in the french team. He deserves his spot on the starting XI,
even if he isnt experienced like anelka or henry, we need some youth in attack,
somehting we missed out on in 2006…
honestly big benz is a mixture of soo many players lol
ronaldo (el phenomeno)-brings the ball up, speed, takes on defenders
trezeguet-deadly inside the box with little space
zizou- relaxed on the ball, same tricks lol
he is also very strong in the air, physical vs other players.

he scored so many goals this season, and many of them were assisted by ben arfa
who plays beautiful thru balls and passes. Even though thte two bitch at each other all the time, they are great teammates on the pitch. These two lyonnais and nasri are going to make a killer NT in the very near future
Patrick

Benzema had a great first half of the season and the slowed down significantly. Was he injured or something? Or was it the fact that Perrin started playing him on the left all the time?
Aditya

I think his slowing down was a combination of the following:
– defenders paying him more attention than from start of the season.
– Perrin using him on the left often
– He played in too many matches and was getting tired as Perrin did not give him enough rest.
– Lyon as a team played like shit in the second half of the season.
sandrahn

“Big Benz!” I love it!

“Even though thte two bitch at each other all the time, they are great teammates on the pitch” — I know, it killed me to see them deliberately kept apart from one another, rarely playing together, because when they did play together (and were able to put aside all the personal nonsense) they were really quite magical to watch.

The thing that I love about Benzema is that he’s a rather tall, large kid yet is really elegant and graceful in his movements. He’s just a joy to watch.