He had detected his talent in the early 2000s. Bernard Lacombe, guest of franceinfo, returned this Tuesday, October 18 to Karim Benzema’s Ballon d’Or victory. It “is one of the monuments of the greatest club in the world” al’former player and former adviser to the president of Olympique Lyonnais.
Bernard Lacombe, 70, 258 matches with OL in the 1970s, says his “great pride” after the coronation of a player to whom he remained very close, even after the departure of Karim Benzema from Lyon for Real in 2009. He confides that the native of Bron, in the Lyon suburbs, considers him as “her second dad“.
“He was really a gifted boy, but always very measured in everything he did”
Bernard Lacombe, former adviser to the president of Olympique LyonnaisFrance Info
The former adviser to President Jean-Michel Aulas, withdrawn since 2019, remembers at the microphone of franceinfo his first meeting with Karim Benzema, in the early 2000s, when he was in charge of recruitment for OL. “One morning at the Gerland playground [les terrains où jouaient les équipes de jeunes de l’OL, ainsi que la réserve]an educator said to me ‘come Bernard, there is a young person who has something, you will see, but I will not tell you which one it is’“, says Bernard Lacombe.
“I arrived there, continues the former international, I look at the kids, the ball strikes, the dribbles, the checks, and I tell him: ‘that’s the one’, and he says to me ‘yes, it’s him, you’ll see, he’s a great player, he has everything going for him, he strikes with both feet, he has good heading, he’s fast, he’s tough, he has all the symptoms for go to the highest level‘”. According to him, the forward, now 34, had “a lot of desire“. Football “meant everything to him, because he was always down in the yard with the other kids in the city“.
On the pitch, Karim Benzema leaves the memory of a player “with ease“, according to Bernard Lacombe, but who nevertheless “never balked when there were physical exercises“. Bernard Lacombe confides that both had a ritual the day before the matches. They were going to walk to prepare for the meeting: “I told him ‘pay attention to the first contacts when you receive the ball. The defender who will mark you, he will come from behind, he may hit you a little, so move, move, move well. I then put myself behind him, and all of a sudden, he picked up“, says Bernard Lacombe.
On the man, the former player describes him as a “silent, always discreet“, but still “Good Feel“.”It’s always the Karim that I knew“, assures Bernard Lacombe. Despite their closeness, the former adviser to the president Jean-Michel Aulas confides that they never spoke of the case of the sextape of Mathieu Valbuena, for which Karim Benzema was sentenced in 2021 for complicity in blackmail.”I never wanted to talk to him about it, it’s difficult“, slips Bernard Lacombe, who knows that his protege”experienced it badly, because things that happened are inadmissible“.