Real Madrid: 3 ways Karim Benzema’s return will help France

Experience and Leadership come along with the striker

Karim Benzema has around 17 years of top-flight football and UEFA Champions League experience, with 700+ club football appearances. He has loads of experience of playing at a high level, and he also has 81 caps for France. This shows how much experience the 33-year-old striker has, and the level he’s showing at the age of 33 speaks a lot about his professionalism and dedication to the sport.

Experience is something Benzema’s return will bring immediately, which will be extremely valuable for a France team with many young and maturing players like Kylian Mbappe, Ousmane Dembele, Kingsley Coman, and many more players. The fact that those players would play alongside a legend of the game creates a sense of excitement, with Kylian Mbappe already showing signs of that excitement. 

Another major factor that comes with Benzema’s presence is his leadership. Though he is the third captain of Real Madrid, he has captained a lot of Real Madrid matches this season with Ramos and Marcelo being out with injuries, and he has behaved like a leader. He has been the pilot of Real Madrid’s relatively young attack with him being the focal point as well as the driving force of that attacking line that dictates the flow of things.

In the current French team, he is the player who has made the earliest debut, even before the current captain Hugo Lloris’ debut. The management would definitely expect such an experienced player to act as an attacking leader with youngsters around him, and be a team player at the same time so that he can develop chemistry with the team. But given Beznema’s adaptability, something which is reflected from his linkup with Hazard on the field, I don’t think it would take long for Benzema to settle in.