January madness takes hold as Benzema leads the line for Chelsea after Man Utd ‘greenlight’ transfer

Editor F365
Karim Benzema with Man Utd and Chelsea badges.
Karim Benzema with Man Utd and Chelsea badges.

This barren January transfer window has broken us all, with desperate newspapers and online outlets forced to live off scraps like imagining what a football team might look like if it comprised Karim Benzema and 10 actual Chelsea players, while Man United ‘greenlight’ (one word apparently?) a transfer by having absolutely no interest in it. This is end of days stuff.

 

Ben 10
It’s still the January transfer window. And it’s still deathly quiet. January is often a bit like this before a late flurry of desperate activity, but for many sound reasons this year doesn’t really feel like a calm before the storm. It feels like a calm before…well, some more calm. You know January is f***ed when Spurs are the ones doing most of the doing, and even that amounts to one permanent signing who might have a meaningful impact on this season.

So it’s headlong into the realm of just making stuff up we all go. What if Chelsea signed Karim Benzema? ask The Sun, desperately. They might do that, might they? Well, it is a theoretical possibility, and it’s no coincidence to see The Sun latch on to Chelsea here given their antics over the last couple of years.

But the fact Chelsea both a) desperately and obviously require a striker and b) notably are not attempting to chuck 100 million quid and a very clever actually eight-year contract at this problem is its own clue.

Nevertheless, the top story on the The Sun’s football page all morning has been one pretending Benzema might be joining Chelsea. In their own story about this possible transfer hit we all desperately crave, The Sun make the following admission.

The Blues will face a battle to get their man, however, with Al-Ittihad’s owners the Saudi Public Investment Fund being extremely reluctant to let Benzema leave – particularly following Jordan Henderson’s move from Al-Ettifaq to Ajax.

Doesn’t sound like this is nailed on. Even the claim that Benzema’s unhappiness in Saudi Arabia ‘could open the door to Chelsea’ sounds more like hope than expectation.

Does this stop The Sun running one of their (and our, to be fair) favourite ‘How Chelsea could line-up’ bits? Of course it does not.

But it feels like a sign of the times when even an outlandish theoretical ‘How Team X could line-up…’ feature – for Chelsea of all teams – includes the headline-grabbing desperate unlikelihood of Benzema alongside… ten current Chelsea players. Two of those ten are Reece James and Ben Chilwell so, to be entirely fair, it does arguably hit the brief for this format in thus being both wildly unlikely and almost entirely hypothetical.

 

Green, green arse
Not the best bit of Benzema content knocking around this morning, mind. For that we head to the Daily Mirror and a furthering of Mediawatch’s grudging admiration for their despicable but oddly brilliant ability to sculpt a titillating and technically accurate headline from the most barren of source material.

They do great things. Terrible, yes… but great.

Here we go.

Karim Benzema breaks silence on Saudi Arabia exit after Man Utd ‘greenlight’ transfer

Now a novice Mirror headline reader might quite reasonably look at that and think there is some suggestion here that Manchester United might be in the business of trying to sign Karim Benzema.

You, dear Mediawatch reader, obviously know better. Obviously, this headline actually means the opposite of that. But even you, seasoned and handsome spotter of bullsh*t that you are, will do well to work out how precisely they got to that headline without committing to any actual outright falsehood.

Let’s start at the start. Benzema’s silence breaking on a Saudi Arabia exit. He’s said he isn’t going to be making one.

We got that bit, and we expect you did too. Whenever anyone ‘breaks their silence’ on something in the less newsy direction, it will not be said out loud in the headline. So ‘Benzema breaks silence on Saudi Arabia exit’ was always likely to mean ‘Benzema isn’t leaving Saudi Arabia’. But you can’t put that in a headline when you want to pretend Manchester United might sign him, so instead we go with the ‘Bear breaks silence on woods-based defecation’ formula. Fine. Well, not fine. But long-established and well-worn by now. We all saw that one coming.

What about that other bit, though? ‘After Man Utd ‘greenlight’ transfer’ can only mean one thing, surely? That Manchester United would actually have gone for it if he were available?

Well, no. It can also mean, as it does here when you plug back in some of the important omitted details, that Lyon might have signed him.

Yes. Manchester United’s ‘greenlighting’ of a transfer here was of Benzema to Lyon because they, Manchester United, were in fact not interested in signing him.

It’s magnificent. Look, it’s all there, bold as brass. And are the Mirror also quoting themselves with this weird one-wordification of ‘greenlight’? You know it.

Though the Red Devils are in need of a striker, his age and £86million per year wages have put off club chiefs from pursuing the five-time Champions League winner. Though Rasmus Hojlund has so far failed to fire since his summer arrival, United do not see Benzema as a viable option.

With the Red Devils pulling out, that appeared to hand a greenlight to Lyon in their own pursuit of the Ittihad captain. He won four Ligue 1 titles with Les Gones after breaking into their first-team in 2004.

Its disgustingly brilliant, isn’t it? But the consequences are far-reaching. With this format, you can now put ‘after Man Utd ‘greenlight’ transfer’ into literally any story you want. United’s non-interest in a player now allows you to confect a just-about-legitimate headline that strongly suggests the opposite. And this works for literally any footballer on earth, as long as Manchester United aren’t actually trying to sign them and someone else might be doing so. It’s perfect. As long as you don’t mind deliberately and consistently misleading readers and taking them for granted, of course.

Speaking of which…

Why does everything I whip leave me?

 

United front
This is another one we totally understand and grudgingly accept as a necessity born of modern football journalism’s grim realities, but it doesn’t mean we have to like it.

AFCON – and the Asia Cup too – are not trivial little things that exist to inconvenience the Premier League’s big clubs. They are major continental tournaments and, while Mediawatch knows it lives in a fantasy world, we would nevertheless really like to see them treated as such.

Yesterday, Cameroon played Gambia with a place in the knockouts at stake. The match was, to sum it up in a word, mental. After a goalless first half, Cameroon led three times, were pegged back twice by Gambia who then thought they’d done so again in stoppage time only for the goal to be disallowed for what it turned out was an extremely funny and obvious handball. Cameroon thus secured second place in Group C and move on to face Nigeria in the knockouts.

A wildly exciting, dramatic and entirely on its own terms significant game of football, then.

The Sun’s headline?

Man Utd blow after Gambia vs Cameroon chaos

And intro?

Manchester United will continue to play without Andre Onana as Cameroon reach the Afcon knockout stage.

As with so, so much about 2024, the fact we understand it doesn’t mean we have to like it.

Mediawatch Karim Benzema

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