In the summer of 2018, the League was amputated with the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo. Three years later, in August 2021, she became an invalid with the forced goodbye of Messi. Thus ended a cycle, surely unrepeatable in the history of the national championship. Never before have two players maintained a face-to-face at such a high level and so extended over time. From the arrival of Ronaldo to the League, in the summer of 2009, and until his departure eight years later, Real Madrid and Barcelona They added triple figures to their list of goals scored, and the Portuguese and Argentines made it routine to score at least 40 goals a season. The record was signed Messi in the 2011-2012 season, scoring 50 goals in the league. Cristiano was very close to matching him in the 2014-2015 season, in which he scored 48 goals. A ruthless duel between the two best players of the modern era, which turned the race for top scorer into a competition parallel to the usual collective titles for which the two transatlantic Spanish footballers fight each season.
Ronaldo’s goodbye was a red carpet for Messi He won the pichichi trophy on the streets during the three leagues he played for Barça, without Cristiano at Madrid, but his figures began to decline until he won it with only 25 goals, an amount far removed from the astronomical figures seen years ago. The pique that he had with Cristiano was one more incentive to accumulate records and break statistics, and that is what is visualized in the current League with the arrival of Lewandowski to Barcelona. Benzema doesn’t need a rival to match him to show that, at the moment, he is number one. That version of the world superclass was already brought out as soon as Cristiano left for Turin, and four years later it continues to be so. Nor does he need to face, in the eternal rival, one of the best scorers of the last decade to show that he is already a predator of the area, but only three days of the League have been enough to verify that French and Polish can resurrect a pulse of scorers which will be one more incentive to stick to the television screen one weekend after another.
At the moment, the account goes to goal per game. Officially, in the case of Lewandowski, to something else: at 1.33 for having awarded him 3-0 against Valladolid, in which the Pole’s heel was not aimed at the goal but the leg of Joaquín, the defender from Pucelano, unintentionally led him to the net. The minutes gave the Barça striker the goal and that makes him co-lead the top scorer, along with Borja Iglesias, with Benzema just behind with three goals – the two scored on Sunday at the RCDE Stadium and the penalty he scored in Balaídos on matchday two.
Both strikers are 34 years old, but their performance is far removed from an age in which, normally, a high percentage of footballers have already played the best 50 games of their career. Two Benjamin Button at the helm of Barcelona and Madrid. Benzema is experiencing the best moment of his career: in the last league he scored 27 goals, his highest number ever, and in total he scored 44 in 46 games, also the best total mark of his career. In the current campaign, apart from the three goals he has scored in the League, he scored another in the European Super Cup, so he continues to ride the wave of one goal per game. And, ahead, in addition to the challenge of reissuing the top scorer, the complicated task of approaching Cristiano Ronaldo’s 451 goals. With 327 it seems impossible for him to reach him, but if Benzema keeps in the Madrid this level three more seasons, who knows what he is capable of. Even on gray days, like against Espanyol, in which he is not successful in the shot, he gets confused and does not play his best game, he manages to win it with two decisive goals in the last minutes.
In case of Lewandowski It is a photocopy of Benzema’s. In his last three seasons at Bayern he scored 34, 41 and 35 goals in the Bundesliga, his best number in the eight seasons he played in Bavaria. He is the second top scorer in the history of Bayern and in his career he has 538 goals in 742 games. It is evident that at Barça he will also put on his boots. The new duel to the goal of LaLiga promises.
