“I think I’ve said it before… You want me to say it here?” Karim Benzema smiles from ear to ear. By a kind of contagion effect, some journalists present laugh with him. But the main body is not fooled. Seated, the Madrid star then seems to advance towards his audience, throwing his shoulders forward, as if taking his answer head-on: “Thank you Didier!”
Then: “One more word. I love you mom.” Three days after Mother’s Day and the return of Karim Benzema on the media scene as part of a tricolor rally in Clairefontaine, the France team faces the Welsh selection in Nice this Wednesday evening (kick off at 9:05 p.m.) , the first of two friendly matches negotiated by the French Football Federation in anticipation of the Euro (June 11-July 11). And, seen from the blue train, the week that has just passed has been dominated, crushed, rolled down not by the presence of Benzema in the group, which the star has invested as one gets into his slippers, but by an out- difficult to define field but who seems to scream every time a bit of foam rises to the surface.
Thus, the coach Didier Deschamps was publicly thanked Sunday by the greatest French striker of his generation for having “pardoned” (but for what?) After being sidelined for five and a half years. That the coach of the Blues will never have motivated. In fact, Benzema had not yet thanked him by name since his post-convocation tweet – “So proud of this return to the France team and of the trust that I am given” – cast a broad cast and spared an indeterminacy that many – including Deschamps, one imagines – had noted. On Sunday, even displaying a smile suggesting the second degree, the player performed in front of the cameras. As part of a press conference calling the ban and the backbench. And live.
“There was suffering”
Before that, Benzema had walked through a real minefield. Without problem besides since it knows, since time, the ins and outs of all the questions which were put to him for the occasion and even of the others. On the Yalta which promises to be between star attackers and more precisely Antoine Griezmann, not the most comfortable in society since the return of the prodigal son to Clairefontaine:“Grizou and I are very high level players. We don’t need to think, it’s automatic. ” On his favorite system, which would allow you to configure the Yalta to come: “It doesn’t matter. I played everywhere. You have to adapt, to have a nice and good offensive animation. I will adapt: at no time will we be three to the left or three in the axis and anyway, football is moving, running. “
Football is more constrained when we approach the defensive aspect and replacements when the ball is lost but that, he will talk about another day. Over the five years in the closet: “What disappointed me the most was not being selected for the World Cup. It’s normal, I’m a player, I like competition. But on the other hand, I questioned myself, I worked a lot more. “ On the initiative of the contact between him and the coach, completely broken since April 2016: “It doesn’t matter who looked for what. […] We had a good discussion, between men. The most important thing is that today I’m in the group, I’m super happy. […] There are always regrets, we cannot go back. […] If we are not taken [en équipe de France], you should only blame yourself. You have to look at yourself and see what to do to come back. ” Here. In the assembly, someone asked him if he wanted some “To France and the French”.
The native of the Lyon metropolis, in the metropolis of Lyon, seemed to confusedly grasp the trap that was opening under his feet: he answered personal questioning. Phew. We will have found this proud player and sure of his rights which we remembered at a single moment, when he answered for the umpteenth time about what, in his eyes, had allowed his return to the Blues. The response rocketed like a Stinger missile:“I think these are my club performances. They are the ones who brought me there. It’s football that speaks. ” Either the note he held during five years of purgatory, the thread of life to which the Madrid striker clung as long as he could: football is on my side. The distant echo of a somewhat harsh precept rehashed by all educators in training centers around the world and that Benzema resuscitates in a flawed context, highly political whatever one may say, as we will draw from the source: j finally got what I deserve.
False and disruptive communication
Therefore, the contrition of Sunday of a Benzema who is, until further notice, guilty of nothing had in his eyes the merit of re-establishing a natural order: that of the game. twenty-five minutes that the international tricolor spent in front of the microphones. The player that we met in the France team before November 2015 was certainly directive, as certain of his talent as it is possible to be but also courageous, assuming what there was to assume – starting with the media raids which he does not like – and viscerally reluctant to give his audience what they expected (“It’s serious, isn’t it?” he had estimated one day), in a mixture of pride and honesty that defines him as closely as possible.
The one we met on Sunday is caught in the veins, hollow and without any illusion about the value of the words he lets go in the context. The media or the general public are nowhere in the equation. Deschamps is the only recipient of the exercise imposed by the player on Sunday. Benzema paid the price. High, commensurate with his attachment to the Blues and the sporting ambition that goes with it. It is difficult to say what trace will leave this episode in the recent history of the selection: it will be the return of Benzema as the rest and history will be rewritten in the light of the sporting outcome of the affair, which is certainly unfair but perfectly integrated by the biotope of the round balloon and all that is attached to it.
In other words, if it is allowed to doubt the long-term effectiveness of a general communication (we put Deschamps in the blow) so false and disturbing, the results will have the power to dress all that up in a fairy tale, where football raises the enemies of yesterday to the heights by giving birth to a concord and a harmony of which team sports have the secret. For now, there is a convergence of interests. And the French players parade in front of the microphones to say who his admiration, who his relief. Midfielder Corentin Tolisso: “Karim’s return was a surprise compared to what happened before [le contentieux avec Deschamps, ndlr], but not at the sporting level. Being from Lyon, I was a Benzema supporter at OL. I was 13, 14 and already an international star. I never thought I could play with him. ” Defender Jules Koundé: “We are all aware of the player he is, of the career he is making and of what he can bring. Expectations are especially on the side of journalists, from the outside. Here, I think that nothing more is expected of him than to be Karim Benzema. ”
Transition to adulthood
Defender and vice-captain Raphaël Varane, Benzema teammate at Real: “I am very happy with Karim’s return to the team. For five or six years, I was in a difficult situation when I was asked questions about him, between a friend and my lifelong coach. […] The France team remained in his heart, he watched our matches, he was always attentive to the life of the group and to all the matches that we played in his absence. “ While waiting to hear Griezmann, Kylian Mbappé but also Paul Pogba, offensive headliners before the recall of the Madrilenian, all we have heard is to match.
Training confirms: if Mbappé split with an impressive show of force on Sunday, erasing all the defenders who passed within range as if he were dealing with blocks, Benzema is quiet, collective. In his hand. But him ? After his media performance on Sunday, some followers indulged in a reading that was both courageous and cosmic, retracing a kind of passage to adulthood – the player having also mentioned the fact of being a father – and of social learning through the taking into account of the contingencies which surround it and the muting of the necessarily sacrificial ego at this level of talent and constancy. Which amounts to imagining revolt and intransigence as a facility. Others, less lyrical, kept an eye on the dashboard: will it hold up?
Can it hold? The depth of the beliefs of the players being always proportional to the talent, won’t Benzema and his four victories in the Champions League see noon on their doorstep at half-time of a badly embarked match at the Ferenc-Puskás stadium in Budapest? in three weeks, in which case he could come up against the no less thick certainties of a Mbappé who sees himself carrying French football on his back until the Olympic Games or of a Deschamps who will certainly have an authorized opinion on the subject? For now, it’s laughing. The question is, until when.
