Europe 1 with AFP 10:34 p.m., October 17, 2022
Huge favorite, Karim Benzema won the Ballon d'Or 2022 for best player on Monday evening to crown his perfect 2021-2022 season with Real Madrid, a planetary consecration for the Blues striker (34), the first Frenchman to be awarded since Zinédine Zidane in 1998. He beat Sadio Mané and Kévin De Bruyne.
Receiving the trophy from Zidane during the ceremony held at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Benzema became the best player in the world in 2022. He succeeds Lionel Messi, winner last year of his seventh trophy awarded by France Football magazine .
Benzema has won almost everything in the 2021-2022 season: Champions League and Spanish Championship in club, Nations League in selection, titles of top scorer and player in Spain in 2021-2022.
Reformed this year and refocused on the sports season and not the calendar year, the Ballon d'Or regulations have proven to be even more favorable to the French, insisting on "individual performance" and the "decisive and impressive character" of the applicants. .
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"Seeing this trophy in front of me is a source of pride. I think back to when I was little, all the work, I never gave up. It's a childhood dream, I grew up with that in my head “, said Benzema when receiving his award, thick beard and thin glasses, dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt with a black collar inspired by an outfit of his idol, rapper Tupac Shakur.
5th tricolor player rewarded
He is the fifth tricolor player awarded after Raymond Kopa (1958), Michel Platini three times (1983-1985), Jean-Pierre Papin (1991) and Zidane (1998).
"It's the people's Ballon d'Or," said the Real Madrid player on the stage at the Théâtre du Châtelet.
This places him high, very high in the hierarchy of the best French footballers in history, he who in March 2022 became the best French scorer of all time with more than 400 goals, ahead of Thierry Henry.
A great football fan, the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron sent a message of congratulations to the Frenchman.
Two letters and a number that will go down in football history. 24 years after Zidane, Karim @Benzema brings another Ballon d'Or to France. Congratulations to him! https://t.co/Y8bCJTfLVm
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) October 17, 2022
Place at the World
A reward that will blur a sometimes tarnished image in France, where this altruistic striker with polished technique has often been caught up in extra-sporting files, from the "Zahia" case, where he was released, to the " sextape", where he was given a one-year suspended prison sentence for "complicity in attempted blackmail" against his former teammate Mathieu Valbuena.
Absent from the France team between 2015 and 2021 because of these disputes, deprived in particular of the World Cup-2018 won by the Blues, the striker with 97 selections can now project himself with appetite towards the World Cup-2022 in Qatar (November 20 -18 December).
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Robert Lewandowski (4th) has certainly completed another full season at Bayern Munich before joining Barcelona this summer, but the Pole has hardly shone in Europe.
Kylian Mbappé was brilliant with Paris SG but suffered the law of Real de Benzema in the knockout stages of the Champions League and he failed in a disappointing 6th place.
As for Sadio Mané, he lost against Real in the C1 final (1-0), after having been African champion with Senegal and vice-champion of England with Liverpool.
Kevin De Bruyne, winner of the Premier League with Manchester City, completes the podium.