F365’s early loser: Karim ‘The Finger’ Benzema

“You cannot cover the sun with a finger,” said Real Madrid goalkeeper Keylor Navas after watching his teammates fail to score for the third successive game. He is not in the business of pretending that Real do not miss Cristiano Ronaldo. And what he says with his words, poor Karim Benzema says with his actions, toiling bravely but utterly failing to be the focal point of an attack missing its brightest light.

The Frenchman had not been a prolific goalscorer over the last two seasons before Ronaldo’s departure, but his role had changed; he was the foil. Or – to labour the metaphor used by Navas – he was the mirror reflecting the sun. Benzema only scored five La Liga goals last season but that was almost fine because Ronaldo scored 26. The pair worked in tandem with Benzema in the selfless Emile Heskey role. Although they faltered in pursuit of a domestic title, a third Champions League victory was a pretty effective sticking plaster.

But what nobody wants to see is Heskey as the lone striker; that’s when a centre-forward goes a barely believable six games without managing even one shot on target. This is not solely a case of striker misfiring – though there has been plenty of that – but also of a striker who is no longer really confident playing as a striker, having spent the last two seasons ceding that position to Ronaldo. He’s the straight man now being asked to make jokes. And nobody is laughing.

Real Madrid fans are certainly not laughing; they are exasperated, watching Benzema hang back in midfield like a late-stage Wayne Rooney, swapping possession with Luka Modric and Toni Kroos but being noticeably reluctant to make a move into goalscoring positions. The one thing Madrid need is a goalscorer and right now, Benzema is simply not playing the role. Indeed, he looks like he could never convincingly play that role again.

With Ronaldo gone and Gareth Bale unavailable, Real fielded a team in Moscow that scored a grand total of 30 goals last season in La Liga. Nobody had reached double figures and it showed. Marco Asensio and Lucas Vazquez made a series of bad decisions as they became more and more desperate to turn possession into penetration.

“The fact that we haven’t scored many goals is not just his problem,” said Madrid coach Julen Lopetegui. He’s right because it’s also his problem as the manager, and will remain his problem for as long as he persists with Benzema as his striker when he is going through a crisis of confidence that makes a mockery of the idea that Mo Salah is struggling. The way Mariano Diaz threw his head at crosses after he came off the bench suggested that he at least wants to play as a striker.

You cannot cover the sun with a finger, but what you can do is find another source of light.

Sarah Winterburn