Karim Benzema scored one of the best curlers you’ll see vs. Athletic Bilbao (Video)

Real Madrid star striker Karim Benzema has been on fire this season, and the world-class No. 9 continued his incredible form with two rapid-fire goals at San Mames on Wednesday night against “Viejo Clasico” rivals Athletic Bilbao.

The second of Benzema’s goals was a straightforward, cool finish under physical pressure, which led to a brief injury scare.

But the first goal is the one that Madridistas cannot stop talking about. It was a curling effort of the highest quality from a man who has upgraded his finishing from “very good” to “arguably the best in the world” over the past couple of seasons of leading the Madrid attack.

You can view a video of the goal below.

Karim Benzema’s goal vs. Athletic Bilbao was a exhibition of technical excellence

Karim Benzema got so much curl on this one. You have to in order to score from that angle, as Benzema was on the edge of the left side of the box. That’s the territory to go for a curler, but most players usually like to get a step or two inside before going for it.

Instead, Benzema got it around the defender and got both enough bend AND pace on the ball. The latter is very important, because from that angle, it can be tough to get the bend you need and still get the pace on the shot to beat the keeper. As a rule of thumb, the more pace you put on the ball, the less bend you can get and vice versa, with pace being a determining factor for shots at lower heights.

On top of all that, Benzema hit this first time. Again, it shows you his quality and experience with finishing – all practiced meticulously – for him to get the strike exactly perfect and get his foot around the ball sufficiently without having time to take a touch or two.

This goal was Benzema’s 14th of the 2021-2022 LaLiga season. He now has 15 goals in total, counting the second against Bilbao, which means he is four ahead of the player in second in the league, the surprise star of Real Betis, Juanmi.

Real Madrid fans should celebrate this goal and watch it over and over again, but we all know Karim the Dream, as Julien Laurens likes to call him, will have many more worldies in him just in the current campaign alone.

And for those of us who play football, even for fun, we will be watching this goal especially closely as a perfect exhibit of how to execute this type of curling technique from wide zones of the attacking third.