In a message posted on Twitter on Monday, French striker Karim Benzema announced the end of his international career. The 2022 Ballon d’Or winner was unable to take part in the World Cup in Qatar with the Blues due to injury. He remains on a record of 97 selections for the France team and 37 goals.
End clap for Karim Benzema. The Real Madrid striker, winner of the last Ballon d’Or, announced on Twitter the end of his career with the France team the day after the defeat of the Blues in the final of the 2022 World Cup against Argentina. The one who turns 35 on Monday has played 97 games in the tricolor jersey and scored 37 goals.
“I made the effort and the mistakes it took to be where I am today and I’m proud of it! I wrote my story and ours ends,” wrote the centre-forward. , who celebrates his 35th birthday on Monday, accompanying his message with a photo of himself in the jersey flanked by the rooster.
I made the effort and the mistakes it took to be where I am today and I’m proud of it!
I have written my story and ours is ending. #Newpic.twitter.com/7LYEzbpHEs— Karim Benzema (@Benzema) December 19, 2022
A strange communication on social networks
This announcement comes after a World Cup for which he had to forfeit at the last moment after being hit in the thigh in training, just three days before the start against Australia. His recovery time had been estimated at three weeks by the French Federation (FFF). On social networks, he had since alternated messages of encouragement for the French and other more enigmatic ones like the one posted on Instagram just before the Argentina-France final where he wrote: “I’m not interested”.
This injury was just another chapter in Benzema’s upset history with the selection. Despite his 97 caps and 37 goals, the former Lyonnais never really shone in blue. He thus won only one competition, the League of Nations in 2021, with the Tricolores and was kept out of it for a long time, from 2015 to 2021, because of his involvement in the so-called affair of the “sex tape”.
He was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 75,000 euros at first instance by the Versailles Criminal Court for complicity in attempted blackmail for facts dating back to 2015. He had appealed and should have been tried a second times on June 30 and July 1 by the Versailles Court of Appeal but he finally withdrew. He had made his return to the France team to everyone’s surprise just before Euro-2021, concluded after an elimination on penalties in the round of 16 against Switzerland (3-3 ap).