How Karim Benzema’s recent Ballon d’Or win impacts the dynamics of elite strikers in recent football history
The debate about elite strikers is one that is as old as football itself and seems to feature different players based on eras and achievements.
Karim Benzema has been in the discussion in recent years and now that he has won the ultimate individual prize in football, it has most likely cemented his place among the elite.
However, where exactly he ranks and who he usurps by virtue of the Ballon d’Or remains in contention and will most likely rage on until another generation of strikers come to the fore.
How important is the Ballon d’Or really?
As earlier stated, the Ballon d’Or is the plateau of individual achievement in football, the ultimate recognition of a football player’s excellence over the span of a year.
Looking at it simplistically, Karim Benzema could rightly be considered greater than every one of his peers who have not won the award…and there are quite a few.
Luis Suarez, Robert Lewandowski, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Sergio Aguero, Harry Kane, Edinson Cavani, and Gonzalo Higuain are just some of the strikers in that elite bracket who shared an era with Benzema but never or still haven’t touched gold.
In fact, Benzema is the first centre forward i.e out and out striker (Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi don’t count) to win this award since Andriy Shevchenko.
As impressive and laudable as Benzema’s Ballon d’Or is, there is a deeper context to why he has one and all of his peers combined do not.
Ballon d’Or is not the ultimate
We have already established the Ballon d’Or as a crowning achievement for individual excellence but it also doesn’t mean that players who have not won it are less than those who have.
Thierry Henry never won it, which is an indication of how unreliable awards are as metrics of a player’s ability as the Frenchman lost out to Pavel Nedved in 2004.
Robert Lewandowski would have won it in 2020 unanimously and unopposed had the awards not been cancelled that year because of the pandemic.
Other world-class strikers in Benzema’s era could also argue that Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi being at the peak of their powers for over a decade is why they haven’t won it and they wouldn’t be wrong.
The fact that Benzema has now won it when those two are in obvious decline lends credence to that theory.
Where does Benzema rank now?
Of course, there is no official ranking of elite strikers and this discourse is circumstantial at best and extremely subjective.
But it is a discussion that already exists and must be had; is Benzema now the best striker of his generation?
The simple answer would be no as he has fewer goals than Luis Suarez and Robert Lewandowski who are his two closest competitors.
A Ballon d’Or doesn’t make Benzema automatically better than his peers, especially as they have been ahead of him for long stretches of their careers.
Benzema has elevated his game and sort of become a late bloomer since Cristiano left Real Madrid in 2018 but that doesn’t erase the fact that he was subpar for nearly a decade before then.
Benzema’s Ballon d’Or elevates his standing in the game and earns him the respect he deserves but it will not revise history and make him better than Luis Suarez, Robert Lewandowski and other strikers who have not won it.
Pulse
