‘Thanks, honestly’: Karim Benzema leaves Real Madrid with legacy secure

F ourteen years have passed since a car pulled up on Rue Youri Gagarine, Lyon, and the president of Real Madrid got out, but Karim Benzema can still picture it clearly. “You came to my home,” the Frenchman said on Tuesday morning as he said goodbye again, “and when I saw you, I thought: ‘This is the man that brought Zizou [Zinedine Zidane] and Ronaldo [Nazário] and he wants me in his team.’” It was 2009, Benzema was 21 and shy. He didn’t offer his visitor a drink, barely said a word and didn’t need much convincing to go but Florentino Pérez told him that he would become the best in the world and that Madrid was the place to do it.

Eventually, he got there. And now he has gone. It is only a few days since Benzema responded to reports of a departure by saying the internet isn’t always right and a couple since Carlo Ancelotti reminded everyone that his striker still had a contract at the Santiago Bernabéu, but there he was standing in the sports hall at the training ground and bidding farewell from a makeshift stage. He left Lyon; half a lifetime later, he departs the place that became home for longer than he could really have imagined but shorter than he had come to hope. “It’s a bit of a sad day,” he said. “I always said wanted to finish my career at Real Madrid but in life there are other opportunities.”

He leaves for Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia as the holder of the Ballon d’Or, voted the best player on the planet less than nine months ago. He was 34 then, 35 now. Recognition seemed to take a long time and almost as soon as he had it he has gone. Almost as if that was all that was left for him, a man who once said he plays “for those who understand football”, who occasionally seemed almost engaged in a mission to