Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema has claimed that he kept spotting space between Liverpool’s centre-backs last night.
The Ballon d’Or holder scored the only goal of the game on Wednesday as Madrid knocked the Reds out of the Champions League. As ever with Benzema against Liverpool, it was a scruffy kind of goal. Having ghosted into the gap between Ibrahima Konate and Virgil van Dijk, he combined with Vinicius Jnr before tapping into an empty net.
Asked to explain the goal to realmadrid.com after the game, Benzema was quick to commend young teammate Eduardo Camavinga for seeing his run. He also had some worrying words on the Liverpool centre-backs.
“As I know Liverpool’s centre-backs play quite wide, there is always more chance through the middle, which is where I went for the goal,” the 35-year-old remarked. “He [Camavinga] tries things, he’s a young player but he’s got heaps of talent and we’re thrilled with him.”
Not every striker around will spot the little things that Benzema does. He’s absolutely one of the best in the business. But it’s still worrying that he could so openly see a weakness in the Liverpool back-line.
Liverpool come up short against one of the best
To be honest, this isn’t something we can say that we’re overly used to seeing with Liverpool’s defending. There’s often plenty of space in behind them and occasionally out wide, but not usually through the middle.
Either way, it was something Rio Ferdinand also picked up on in the aftermath of last night’s game.
You could understand if that was simply Van Dijk and Konate being wary of Benzema’s threat, though. With Vinicius Jnr and Federico Valverde also well-worthy of attention, maybe they weren’t quite sure whether to tighten up or fan wider.
In the end, they kind of did neither. The space for Benzema to slide into wasn’t exactly enormous, though. The ball from Camavinga was sublime and it took a lucky ricochet for the ball to end up in the back of the net.
Had Liverpool been more in the game at that point, perhaps the two centre-halves wouldn’t have let their concentration slip. Konate and Van Dijk were both pretty solid against a rambunctious Madrid forward line all evening.
But with the game already well and truly gone, standards dropped ever so slightly to allow Benzema in. That’s all he needs. Now the player to have scored the most Champions League goals in history against Liverpool [Squawka], hopefully it’s a while before we face him again.
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