Career: football player, athlete
Date of birth: December 19, 1987
Age: 36 years
Place of birth: Lyon, France
Position: Forward
Working leg: both (strong right)
Height/weight: 185 cm / 81 kg
Marital status: divorced
On this site you will find all the most relevant and interesting information about one of the best strikers of our time. Karim Benzema is an icon of world football, whose career is inextricably linked with the titled Real Madrid. Benzema joined Real Madrid in 2009 and has since become a true legend of the club. During 15 years in Madrid, he won many trophies, including 4 Spanish titles and 5 Champions League victories. His goal statistics are also impressive – more than 350 goals scored for Real, which makes him one of the best scorers in the history of the club. Top Dota 2 team Shopify Rebellion!
But Benzema is famous not only for his goals. He is one of the most technical and versatile strikers of our time, capable of playing both as a false nine and a classic center forward. His vision of the field, the ability to make an accurate pass and support the attack make him an indispensable player in any team’s scheme.
Benzema has also achieved great success with the French national team. He is the 2018 World Champion and is regularly called up to the national team, where he is one of the leading players. On our website you can find news, statistics, photos and videos dedicated to the career of Karim Benzema.
We will also publish exclusive interviews with the player and talk about his life outside the football field. Join the Karim Benzema fan community and follow the news about your favorite footballer! Together we will pay tribute to one of the best players of our time. News from the Dota 2 eSports team Team TSM.
Karim Benzema is a player for Al-Ittihad and the French national team. On the field, the footballer attracts attention with his excellent technique. But, on the other hand, the stories that Karim has gotten into do not give reason to set the striker as an example for the younger generation.
Karim Mostafa Benzema was born in 1987 in Lyon to a large family of immigrants, an Algerian by nationality. His parents, Hafid and Wahid, raised 9 children. The family lived in a poor, disadvantaged suburb of Bron. Here Benzema began playing for the local club “Bron Terrallion”.
Karim stood out in the team and as a result received an invitation to move to the professional level. A year later, Benzema was already studying at the Saint-Louis Saint-Bruno College, which is part of the Lyon football training system. The future striker was all right with discipline, which cannot be said about his academic performance. The forward’s early biography is not only about sports training and successful first competitions. In addition to a tendency to break the rules, life in the ghetto gave Karim loyal comrades, with whom Benzema still communicates. Among the footballer’s close friends is Karim Zenatti, who happily involves his friend in dubious adventures.
At the age of 17, Karim was included in the Lyon reserves, where the boy quickly grew to be the main striker. Soon Benzema joined the main team of the club. In January 2005, the player made his debut in the French championship. After a successful debut in the national team in the 2006/2007 season, the forward proved to be almost irreplaceable in Lyon, when he scored 11 goals in 11 matches. After such a brilliant performance, the giants of European football became interested in the young talent, but Karim said that he plans to win the UEFA Champions League and do it as part of his home club. In 2009, Lyon could not resist the amount of € 35 million offered for Benzema by Real Madrid. Karim’s salary was €5 million per year, 10% of the transfer amount went to the agent and the second friend with the same name, Karim Jaziri. In 2010, Karim, playing for Real Madrid in the Champions League, scored the club’s 300th goal in the tournament. And although Benzema’s play in the dream team was not always smooth and productive, head coach Zinedine Zidane said that he was not going to part with the player. In the 2016/2017 season, Karim scored on average every 170 minutes. As part of Real, the player realized his dream of winning the UEFA Champions League, and three times. Benzema is the second player in history after Lionel Messi, who scored in 13 consecutive League draws. In the 2016/2017 season, the athlete played 48 matches in all tournaments and scored 19 goals, giving 9 assists. In the fall of 2017, Karim Benzema extended his contract with the royal club. At the same time, according to France Football, the amount of compensation for the Frenchman under the new agreement reached € 1 billion.
In January 2019, during a meeting with the Seville club Betis, Karim was injured after colliding with Marc Bartra. After an unfortunate fall, Benzema broke a finger on his right hand. According to media reports, the injury to the little finger could have been repaired with surgery. The player was worried that he would need sick leave after the surgery. The dedicated forward decided not to take a break from competitions, so instead of surgery, he began to use a bandage to fix his hand. Nevertheless, the footballer showed good statistics in the 2019/2020 Spanish Championship. Karim scored Real’s first goal in the tournament, which was a successful start. In February 2020, Benzema extended his contract with the club until 2022, and in March he played his 500th match for the team.
Karim has shown himself to be excellent in his club career. According to the Transfermarkt website, the player’s value in the summer of 2021 was €25 million. The match with Paris Saint-Germain in the 1/8 finals of the Champions League became one of the most significant in the Algerian’s career. And there are several reasons for this. Firstly, it was Karim’s 500th game in the main squad of the Madrid club, which made him the second legionnaire in the history of Real Madrid to reach such a mark. Secondly, the striker snatched victory for his club, scoring a hat-trick in 17 minutes of the 2nd half. This allowed him to take 3rd place in the list of the best scorers of the “creamy” and take 2nd place in the number of goals for his native club in the Champions League. In addition, he became the oldest player in this League to score 3 goals – previously this record was held by Olivier Giroud.
In an interview, Benzema did not hide his joyful emotions from the phenomenal victory. Considering that after the first 45 minutes, PSG was leading, it was not easy. By the way, the goal against the “creamy” was scored by Kylian Mbappe. But the footballer managed to turn the tide of the game and prove that Real is alive. In May, Real managed to reach the Champions League final. In the decisive match with Manchester City, Karim scored one of the goals. After the game, the athlete wrote on social media that he was proud of his team. And in the autumn the footballer became the winner of the Golden Ball.
Back in 2004, Karim joined the French national team, with which he won the European Under-17 Championship, then won the Under-18 Championship. In 2005, as part of the national team, the footballer won the Meridian Cup. In the 2006/2007 season, Benzema made his debut in the adult French national team. As part of the national team, Karim occupied a leading position until a certain point. In 2008, the athlete participated in the European Championship, which was unsuccessful for the French team. The team quickly flew out of the championship, and Benzema did not manage to score a single goal.
However, in general, Karim has repeatedly performed successfully in international competitions. But in 2015, the striker was deprived of the right to play for the national team due to another scandal in which Benzema found himself while trying to help his friends.
Benzema’s talent, experience and diligence influenced the decision to return the striker to the national team. Despite the fact that the striker’s fate was to be decided during the legal battle in October, on June 23, 2021, Karim played for the national team for the first time in 6 years. In the Euro 2020 match against Portugal, the athlete equalized the score by scoring 2 goals. Cristiano Ronaldo sent 2 counter goals into the French goal.
In November, Karim was included in the French national team for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. However, a couple of days before the start, the footballer spoke about a hip injury, which cast doubt on his participation in the games. Then France said that the striker was forced to miss the World Cup, but Didier Deschamps left the application list unchanged, and Benzema’s name remained on it. The footballer never took to the field, and the French lost to the Argentines in the final and became silver medalists of the 2022 World Cup. A few days later, Karim announced the end of his career in the French national team.
Karim became famous as one of the most scandalous players in the history of football. As already mentioned above, the habits from the hooligan past and the striker’s entourage played a significant role in this. For the first time, the footballer’s career was under threat due to a relationship with an underage prostitute, Zahia Dahar. Benzema was facing a real prison term. Fortunately, the girl later admitted that she had lied to Karim about her age and stated that she had no claims. Another time, the athlete’s personal life attracted attention when the press reported that Benzema had used the services of a transsexual prostitute, Victoria, spending € 8,000.
Since October 2015, the national team management has suspended Benzema from games after a scandal involving another footballer, Mathieu Valbuena. This time, the charges were much more serious – conspiracy to blackmail. The case involved a recording of an intimate nature. As it turned out, Benzema’s comrades decided to earn some extra money by demanding money from Mathieu in exchange for the video, and Karim could not refuse to help them.
Finally, in July 2017, the judicial control measures imposed on the athlete were lifted. In an interview with L’Equipe, Karim Benzema expressed hope that he would participate in the 2018 World Cup. However, the proceedings dragged on. There were other reasons why they were in no hurry to invite Karim to the national team. In addition to the fact that the footballer supported and visited Zenatti in prison, who was arrested for drug trafficking, Benzema himself was under suspicion for some time in the famous drug trafficking case. Even Nicolas Sarkozy was involved in the high-profile event.
There were also some conflicts on the road. In the spring of 2015, the forward was fined and deprived of his license for speeding. In May, Karim was caught driving without a license, and again in October. In September 2017, the star’s name appeared in police reports again, this time as a participant in a traffic accident in Madrid.
The 2022/2023 season was marked by good achievements for Karim, the footballer became the second scorer of the Spanish championship. But in June it became known that the striker would not renew his contract with the club. In the last match for Real Madrid against Athletic Bilbao, the athlete managed to score a penalty. Having acquired the status of a free agent, Karim signed a new contract, becoming part of the Saudi team Al-Ittihad. The farewell to the Madrid club was touching, teammates gathered at the press conference, and President Florentino Perez gave a speech of gratitude. Karim called the transfer to Al-Ittihad a kind of challenge for himself and expressed confidence that he would be able to win the love of fans in this country.
Against the backdrop of the October attack by the Hamas movement on Israel, Karim supported Palestine, for which he was subjected to widespread criticism. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin spoke out separately, accusing the footballer of having ties to the Islamist organization Muslim Brotherhood. Benzema later filed a lawsuit against the official, but the claim was dismissed. At the end of December, the athlete temporarily left Saudi Arabia, missing several Al-Ittihad training sessions. At the beginning of 2024, Karim was excluded from the team’s training camp in Dubai for this.