KARIM BENZEMA IS ON HIS WAY TO HIS FIRST BALLON D’OR

UEFA / Soccer

Written by Aaron Cantin

It’s not breaking news to declare Karim Benzema, Real Madrid’s centre-forward, the leading candidate for the Ballon D’Or in 2022. In fact, it would be considered a hot-take if you named any player other than Karim Benzema as the leader for Ballon d'Or. The 34-year-old Frenchman has aged like fine wine and appears to continue to get better with age. Although Benzema is on his way to demolishing his career-high in goals, it’s not just the finishing that has Benzema stealing headlines, it’s the way he is doing it.

Karim Benzema | Source (Background Photo): Getty Images

There was the hat trick against Paris Saint-Germain in the second leg of the Round of 16 in the Champions League. Then there was the hat trick in the first leg against Chelsea in the quarterfinals. Then there was the winning goal in the second leg against Chelsea. All in all, Benzema has scored 38 goals in 38 games this season -- a career-high with a month still to play. Ten more goals than anyone in Spain, an additional 12 in the Champions League, a goal a game, a good chunk of which came at decisive high-leverage moments: What more could you want?

Well, that's the thing about Benzema's season; there's lots more. While his goal-scoring alone makes him a worthy candidate for the Ballon d'Or, what really makes him the best player in Europe this season is everything else he does.

Benzema scored 20 goals in a LaLiga season just twice with Ronaldo at the club, while Ronaldo averaged 35 league goals a year in his nine seasons in the Spanish capital. Real Madrid won the Champions League four times during this stint, so it's impossible to argue with the results. But it's also hard not to wonder what Benzema's career might have looked like had he always been the attacking focal point.

After seeming like he'd fallen off the age cliff, he's scored at least 20 league goals in all four seasons since the 2018 World Cup. To reiterate: He scored 11 goals in a season, then he scored five goals in a season, then he turned 30 ... and now he can't stop scoring. At age 34, not only is Benzema scoring more goals than he ever has before, he's involved in everything that happens before the shot, too.

In LaLiga this season, Benzema is both attempting more passes (38.1) and completing a higher percentage (85.5%) of his passes than ever before. He tended to drift toward the same side when he played with Ronaldo -- and that created space for Ronaldo to crash into the penalty area from his starting position on the left-wing. This season, it's where he combines with Vinicius Junior, who's scored more goals this year (17 in all competitions) than in his first three seasons at Madrid put together.

He's averaging 4.9 progressive passes per game, a pass-and-a-half more than in any season since 2017-18. That leads all forwards in LaLiga. While Madrid used to have a world-class midfield, center-backs, and especially Marcelo at full-back to help move the ball forward; now it's an aging, much-more limited version of the same midfield and they're getting little to no ball progression from any of their defenders. So, Benzema has filled the void; only Toni Kroos, Luka Modric, and Casemiro have completed more progressive passes for the club this season.

It's not just passing, either. The other way to move the ball forward? Do it yourself. Benzema is completing 6.2 progressive carries per match, which ranks in the 94th percentile among LaLiga forwards and is once again more than he's recorded in any season since 2017-18. Among Real Madrid players, only Vinicius, who's done it more than any other player in Europe this season, has carried the ball forward more often than Benzema.

All right, so this guy is helping his team keep possession, he's playing a key role in pushing the ball up the field and he's finishing chances in the penalty area. So, there's no way he's also moving the ball into the box and creating chances for his teammates? Wrong! Benzema is completing just over three passes into the penalty area per match, which, once again, is his best mark since 2017-18 and, once again, leads all LaLiga forwards. He's living in both half-spaces on either side of the box, slipping in through-balls to wingers bursting in from the sideline or reverse passes to midfielders making inside-to-out runs behind the defence.

On top of moving the ball into the most dangerous area on the field, he's also frequently playing the final pass for his teammates. He's averaging just over two key passes per 90 minutes -- broken-record alert: the most of his Madrid career and in the 98th percentile among attacking midfielders. That array of creative skill has added up to 11 assists in the league -- one behind his career-high with seven games still to play. He is tied for the league lead with Barcelona's Ousmane Dembele, and on a per-90-minute basis, he's created the most expected assists (0.29) of any player in the league. Like with every other advanced stat already mentioned, that's also his highest number since 2017-18.

So, it's not just that Benzema replaced Ronaldo; he's now also replaced Lionel Messi. It used to be that Messi would be the one to score the most goals and create the most chances and do everything else in LaLiga. Perhaps there was a single player who could match him in a single category, but no one could do all of the things that he was doing at the same time. While LaLiga president Javier Tebas has openly spoken about his desire for Messi to return to the league, a different version of the same kind of player is already there ... he's just playing for Real Madrid.

This year's iteration isn't a vintage Real Madrid team by any means; it's the same midfield as always, just older and not quite as good. Vinicius has made the leap, but he's no Ronaldo, and the opposite wing is still waiting for its Gareth Bale replacement. The full-backs aren't the dynamic two-way forces they used to be or that used to be there, and the center-backs don't have the same kind of decisive impact as Sergio Ramos and Raphael Varane did. Instead, Real Madrid has one thing those other sides never did and one thing that neither Liverpool nor Manchester City currently does, either: this version of Benzema, is better than ever before.