Jean-Baptiste Sarrazin, with AFP
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9:04 p.m., March 13, 2023
Between Didier Deschamps and Karim Benzema, the cloth continues to burn. More than two months after the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and the controversy surrounding the hasty departure of Karim Benzema from the group due to a thigh injury, the Real Madrid striker and the coach are opposed on the version of the facts. In an interview with the media Le Parisien, Didier Deschamps affirms that the Madrilenian would have certified that he was “not ready” for the competition, remarks that Karim Benzema refutes with irony on social networks.
Hit in the thigh, the Ballon d’Or 2022 had to give up the World Cup in Qatar three days before the entry into the running of the French team against Australia, and had left the hotel in a hurry. selection in Doha. But he finally resumed training with his club on December 10, four days before the semi-final against Morocco.
“When Karim was injured, our doctor accompanied him to the Aspetar clinic for an MRI, also said Deschamps. Karim transmitted the results to someone who follows him in Madrid and who also gave him an opinion. When he got back to the hotel, it was already after midnight. I joined Karim in his room with our doctor who had come to give me the report on the MRI (…) Karim is bruised. He told me : ‘It’s dead.'”
Turbulent relationship
“We stayed together for about twenty minutes, added the boss of the Blues. When I left him, I said to him: ‘Karim, there is no urgency. You organize your return with the team manager.’ When I wake up, I learn that he is gone. It is his decision, he will not tell you otherwise, I understand and respect it.” This exit from the coach of the Blues thus puts oil on the fire. “Didier Deschamps put the coin back in the machine. I feel like I’m in the school yard”, blows Alain Roche in Europe 1 Sport (every evening from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.).
The former tricolor is “looking forward to Karim Benzema expressing himself but with a real statement, not with emojis”. Because these statements by Didier Deschamps were greeted with irony by the Real Madrid striker. First by a clown emoticon on the Instagram social network, then by a post in which the 35-year-old footballer wrote: “But what audacity”. He also shared a video of a Snapchatter, Ritchie, repeating the word “liar, you’re a liar.” Above this excerpt, the striker wrote: “Sacré Didier… Good night.”
“Full of misunderstandings”
Benzema, who has only won one competition with the Habs (the Nations League in 2021), was banned from the Blues between 2015 and 2021 because of his involvement in the sextape blackmail affair exercised on his Selection teammate Mathieu Valbuena. This had earned him a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 75,000 euros. Not selected for Euro 2016, he replied in the columns of the Spanish sports daily Marca, saying: “Deschamps gave in under pressure from a racist part of France.”
After his departure from Qatar just before the 2022 World Cup, he also alternated messages of encouragement to the French and other more enigmatic ones like the one posted on Instagram just before the Argentina-France final where he wrote: “It doesn’t does not interest me.” He then announced the end of his international career on December 19, 2022, the day after the World Cup final.
This new pass of arms between Deschamps and Benzema is just one more episode between the two men. For Alain Giresse, present in Europe 1 Sport,: “We will never know the root of the problem because there will be things that will not come out. There are a lot of misunderstandings. We will remain in artistic vagueness without knowing the exact truth.”