Top guns Benzema and Salah set sights on Champions League glory

What is the most alarming sight for a goalkeeper involved in Saturday’s Champions League final? For Thibaut Courtois, of Real Madrid, it would likely be Mohamed Salah bearing down, one-on-one, shifting the ball to his left foot, calculating the angles.

For Liverpool’s Alisson, it may be Karim Benzema, without the ball, hunting him down in the split second when the keeper’s thoughts turn to which pass out from the back is the wisest to make. Any indecision, with Real Madrid’s Benzema in the vicinity, is liable to be punished.

Club football’s greatest prize will be contested in Paris by two strikers who can claim to have mastered better than anybody specific, shifting trends of modern football. Salah has been the most effective goalscorer in the years when Liverpool set the best examples of how to regain possession and transition rapidly into counter-attack.

Benzema has a range of skills that aspiring centre-forwards study and imitate, one of which would be his alert scrutiny of a goalkeeper’s indecision in the age when elite keepers are expected not just to make saves but to pass accurately and fast.

It was that sixth sense that swung the 2018 final between Madrid and Liverpool the way of the Spanish club, Loris Karius the unfortunate Liverpool goalkeeper.

Six minutes after half-time in Kyiv, with the match goalless, Benzema applied, to Madrid’s benefit, a moment of the sort of high pressing that Liverpool under manager Jurgen Klopp have developed so well.

He saw Karius collect a tame, unthreatening ball and the keeper immediately start to think of rolling it out, from the hand, to his right back. Karius did not pay sufficient attention to Benzema’s run towards him. The Frenchman intercepted the attempted pass, and with