Karim Benzema in the legend! Crowned Ballon d’Or after a dream season, the Real Madrid striker became the first Frenchman since Zinédine Zidane in 1998 to achieve this consecration, which the Spaniard Alexia Putellas obtained for the second year in a row.
It’s a brilliant revenge for Benzema (34), sometimes unloved scorer who ended up getting everyone to agree, as for Putellas (28), rewarded Monday evening at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, despite from a serious injury which caused her to miss the Women’s Euro.
Long confined in the shadow of Cristiano Ronaldo (five Ballons d’Or), but finally winner of the 66th edition of the prestigious individual trophy, here is Benzema entered the pantheon of his sport, a year after the seventh title won by Lionel Messi.
This places him high, very high in the hierarchy of the best French soccer players in history, he who in March 2022 became the best French scorer of all time with more than 400 goals on the clock.
It is also Zidane, former coach of Benzema at Real, having played, according to him, a role of “big brother” in his career, who presented the prestigious trophy awarded by the magazine France Football to his French successor.
” See [ce trophée] in front of me it is a pride. I think back to when I was little, all the work, I never let go. It’s a childhood dream, I grew up with it in my head, “said Benzema when receiving his award, thick beard and thin glasses, dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt with a black collar. inspired by an outfit of his idol, rapper Tupac Shakur.
“This Ballon d’Or is individual, but it remains collective, it’s the people’s Ballon d’Or”, he added, applauded by the public who chanted his first name, before being joined on stage by his son Ibrahim (5 years old).
His coronation was hailed on Twitter by French President Emmanuel Macron, who posted “KB9! “, taking up one of the nicknames of the player. “Two letters and a number that will go down in football history. 24 years after Zidane, Karim Benzema brings a new Ballon d’Or to France. Congratulations to him! “, adds the Head of State.
Benzema’s emotion
The center-forward of Real was crowned ahead of the Senegalese Sadio Mané (Liverpool), African champion, and the Belgian Kevin De Bruyne, champion of England with Manchester City – the Mancunian team consoling itself with the price of the club of the season.
To break, like Luka Modric in 2018, the interminable Messi-Ronaldo monopoly, Benzema has won almost everything in the 2021-2022 season: winner of the Champions League and the Spanish Championship in club, the League of Nations in selection, top scorer and player of Spain in 2021-2022,…
Benzema is the first Frenchman thus distinguished since Zidane in 1998, and the fifth tricolor player rewarded after Raymond Kopa (1958), Michel Platini three times (1983-1985), Jean-Pierre Papin (1991) and “Zizou”.
Enough to blur a sometimes tarnished image in France, where this altruistic attacker with a licked technique has often been caught up in extra-sporting files, from the “Zahia” affair, where he was released, to the “sextape” affair. , where he received a one-year suspended prison sentence.
“We must not stay on the failures,” he reacted to AFP after the ceremony. “You keep them, you think about them, but it’s mental strength for me, not remorse. What happened happened, but the most important thing is today. »
Absent from the France team between 2015 and 2021 due to these disputes, the striker with 97 caps can now look forward with appetite to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar (November 20-December 18).
Putellas retains his property
Mané, second, is content with the Socrates Prize for committed footballer, rewarding his action in Senegal for the equal access of girls and actions to the practice of soccer.
Robert Lewandowski (Barcelona, ex-Bayern Munich) leaves with the Gerd Müller Trophy for the best scorer of the season. The Belgian Thibaut Courtois, goalkeeper of Real, wins the Yachine Trophy for the best goalkeeper and the Spaniard Gavi (FC Barcelona), the Kopa Trophy for the best young player.
As for the Women’s Ballon d’Or, Putellas wrote a page of history by becoming the first winner to keep the trophy since its creation in 2018.
Despite the serious injury that deprived her of the Euro won by England, the Catalan dribbled past her English competitors, Beth Mead in the lead, to put her name on the charts again, despite a defeat in the final of Women’s Champions League against Lyon (3-1).
But Putellas has revolutionized Spanish and European women’s football so much in recent seasons that even without a European title, the jurors preferred her to her competitors, one year from the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, where the Barcelonan hopes shine again.
“To stay at the top is much more difficult” than to achieve it, summarized Alexia Putellas to AFP after her trophy.