Karim Benzema sent a little message to Liverpool ahead of the UEFA Champions League final. The Real Madrid star sees overconfidence.
Karim Benzema gave a few interviews this week as Real Madrid prepare for the UEFA Champions League final. They’ll meet Liverpool once again, of course, in a repeat of the 2018 showpiece.
Real go into this one as champions of Spain, while Liverpool fell narrowly short of the Premier League title. Manchester City, who lost to Los Blancos in the semi-finals, pipped the Reds by a point.
Liverpool’s attention has been quite heavily on the Champions League, then. This is how they make up for heartbreak in the title race – by claiming the biggest trophy in European football. Benzema’s problem, though, is that they appear to believe they’ve already won it.
“Liverpool have a lot of confidence. They think they have already won the match, maybe,” Benzema told Movistar. “Maybe they think this isn’t the same Real Madrid as last time, these things. Maybe they think they’re favourites.”
Benzema also addressed comments from Mohamed Salah who openly talked about wanting revenge for defeat in 2018.
“Salah can say what he wants,” said Benzema, before stressing that this was a “different game”.
Karim Benzema comments on Liverpool
It’s brave of anyone from Real Madrid to accuse another club of believing something is wrapped up before it really is.
Regardless, Benzema might have a point here. Liverpool are supremely confident ahead of this one and there is a sense that they’re simply a better team than Real right now. That might squeak over into overconfidence as they look to makeup for their Premier League title defeat.
And Benzema has helped spark a truly remarkable Champions League run, of course – we’ve never seen anything like it. But it did rely on both Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City delivering their annual bottle jobs. That’s not something Liverpool typically do.
So we do believe Liverpool have room for that confidence right now. Is it already won? Far from it – but the Reds rightly feel like favourites.