Karim Benzema regains form, scoring in back to back matches

Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema seems to have regained his form having scored in back to back games. Here’s a look at his number this season.

Being a striker is no easy task, especially with the way the game has been evolving over the last 5 years. Not to say that strikers are lazy but it seems as though strikers are required to do more now than ever before. The modern-day striker is one that can drop deep and help build the play, make intelligent runs off the ball in an effort to divert the defense, and of course, put balls in the back of the net.

For nearly a decade Real Madrid had a goal-scoring machine at their disposal, but this summer that all changed. Florentino Perez struggled to recruit a new attacker to help fill the void and it has shown. Or, have we just put players under the microscope now more than ever?

Karim Benzema is now in his tenth season with Real Madrid. A long time for a player to stay with a club, especially a club of this caliber. With Ronaldo gone Karim knew that a fair sum of the goal scoring responsibility would fall in his lap. Has he delivered is the question?

So far Benzema has played in 17 matches this season, 11 of which were La Liga fixtures, four in the Champions League and one in both the Copa del Rey and UEFA Super Cup. To the surprise of many, he’s managed to score in every competition, the issue though is how spread out these goals are.

Over the course of the 17 matches he has participated in, he’s tallied up 1,289 minutes from which he has scored 9 goals. This means he has scored a goal every 143 minutes. In theory, this sounds wonderful but it is not indicative of his form.

Benzema started off the season wonderfully, with many suspecting that he could have a 20 plus goal season. Despite the loss, Karim scored in the USC match against rivals Atletico Madrid. The next game he would play was the first league match of the season in which he was unable to score.

But in the second and third game in La Liga, he scored two goals in both matches. Again all signs pointed to him having a great season ahead, but that was no more than a flash in the pan. From there he would be shooting blanks for the rest of September and net just twice in the month of October. Both those goals would be against teams who play at a much lower level than Real.

It would take 5 games and over 450 minutes before the Frenchman would score again. Sadly it was in vain as Real fell short of the mark losing 1-2 to Levante. Yet again the striker was like a ghost as Madrid were thumped 1-5 to Barcelona.

This article isn’t just the destruction of Karim though, in a little over a week he has scored goals in back to back league fixtures, something he hadn’t done since September. Including the Champions League match, the forward has scored in three consecutive matches, surely a great confidence boost.

Hopefully, this is the start of a great run of form as the center-forward put a notable performance up against Celta Vigo. He embodied the very essence of the modern day striker, scoring, creating chances for other and being an all-around menace for the opponent’s defense.

Benzema will now have just under two weeks to get some rest and improve his match fitness for the final push of the calendar year as European football is met with another international break. Real Madrid will be back in action on November 24 against Eibar at the Municipal de Ipurua.

Stay tuned to The Real Champs for more great Real Madrid coverage!