Coming off the best season of his career, Karim Benzema has revealed that he studied Cristiano Ronaldo intensely when they were team-mates at Real Madrid.
Benzema and Ronaldo joined the Spanish side in the same summer, from Lyon and Manchester United respectively.
The Portuguese did hit the ground running at the Santiago Bernabeu and became an influential figure in the capital, but it took slightly longer for Benzema to reach his top form.
The France striker had a slow start to life at Madrid and did his best to learn from his team-mate to help improve his own game.
“When I watched what he did, I tried to concentrate on his movements: the dribbling, the finishing, the passing, his ball handling, I dissected everything about him,” Benzema told Onze Mondial.
“But, then it’s impossible to achieve the same thing.
“I still have a lot of things in my head. I want to win more titles, more Champions Leagues. And with the national team, the World Cup. That’s all I have as a dream.”
Last season, Benzema scored 27 times in La Liga in 2021-22 and an incredible 15 times in the Champions League as Madrid won both competitions. That was a significant improvement from his early struggles at Madrid.
He started just 13 of the 27 La Liga matches in which he featured in his first season since making the move from France and struggled to maintain his place in the starting XI.
“My first season, the first six months, were very difficult, as I was alone and I didn’t speak the language so everything was complicated,” he reflected.
“I had arrived in a new world, with a new team, a different type of football. Luckily I didn’t give up.”
