The 34th League of Real Madrid will not be one more among the white cabinets, each day more populated with trophies. With the passage of time, this championship in which the Chamartín club has regained control of national football, will perhaps become one of the most atypical trophies of the almost centennial history of the League. It will be the title of the coronavirus, the championship that was closest to being deserted, the umpteenth success of Zidane under the command of the old guard who threatened to collapse before the arrival of the French coach and who has once again demonstrated why it is the team that He dominated European football with an iron fist in a time that already seemed very far from the old hegemonies, but it will also be the League of Karim Benzema.
The Frenchman, criticized in another time, always in the shadow of the voracious Cristiano Ronaldo, has been able to assume the gallons of goal in Madrid and carry the weight of a champion team almost alone. Benzema’s talent for scoring and generating play has exceeded Hazard and Jovic disappointments, the two great offensive bets of last summer, which despite their high transfers of 100 and 60 million euros have added three goals in the league between the two. The performance of what is already the fifth highest director in the history of Real Madrid has left even the Bale’s inexplicable resignation, Another footballer called to be important that far from monopolizing the spotlights on the grass, at an age when he should have reached the climax of his career has ended up being news for his attitude in the stands.
The exalted maturity of the Lyon, supported by the regularity and the enviable physical condition that he lacked at some moments of his early days at the Bernabéu, has made him the best partner for Zidane, as he is the white squad player with the most minutes in the League, a total of 3,091 spread over 36 games played, all but one as a starter, over 37 games. The Frenchman has responded to the confidence of his coach in an unappealable way, since he already adds 21 league goals that allow you to get to the last day in conditions to dispute the Pichichi Trophy the untouchable Lionel Messi.
The top scorer award would be the perfect icing on a championship in which Courtois already has the Zamora in his hand the goalkeeper least scored, with 20 goals conceded in 34 games played, the other record that explains the final triumph of a Madrid mutated by the work and art of Zidane in a solid team, sacrificed and totally reliable, beyond the goalscoring exuberance of others time.
Two goals from Messi
Benzema reaches the last day two goals from Messi’s 23. Difficult, but not impossible, because in the white squad they have between eyebrows to give their best gunner the prize of a individual recognition he was amply credited with the strange penalty against Villarreal, in which Ramos tried to emulate the indirect shot patented by Cruyff and Neeskens in 1982 with little luck, as the white ‘9’ entered the rival area prematurely. Saved by the bell from the invasion of two Villarreal footballers, the Madrid captain even gave up the transformation from eleven meters to his partner to continue adding in the particular battle with Messi.
Beyond the fight for a Pichichi that for a long decade has been the private preserve of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo with the exception of the Luis Suárez award in the 2015-16 season, another fact further increases Benzema’s decisive role in this League madridista. The Frenchman, a ‘9’ who always had the soul of ’10’, is also the sixth top assistant in the championship, with up to eight goal passes, including the one that starred in the visit to Espanyol, with a touch of the heel for the Casemiro goal, which is already the image of this League on its own merits.
Zidane’s Madrid, who showed greater winning will than Barça de Setién in the return of football, set two final purposes to close the League: complete the full of eleven wins in eleven matches after the break of which the squad and coaching staff always spoke and raised Benzema to the status of top scorer, thus completing a Liga-Pichichi-Zamora triplet that nobody has achieved for a decade, when Guardiola’s Barça did it in the second season of the Catalan coach at the head of the Barça bench.
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