Platini was on par with Maradona, Benzema is not close to him overall.
Best striker in the world: Benzema or Lewandowski?
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Di Maria who won 1 out of these 4 CLs?
Bale who was benched in 2/4 of the runs?
Pepe who left after 2016?
Seriously?
2014 : Benzema scored in the Bayern tie first leg
2016 : Arguably his weakest CL campaign I'll give you that
2017 : Massive play to stop Atletico's comeback, involved in the build up for a lot of Ronaldo's goal.
2018 : Brace in semis, goal in the final.
La Liga also has 20 instead of 18 teams. So 4 more games VS super weak opponents to score easy goals.
You could even thrown in Isco, Casemiro, Marcelo, Navas & Carvajal as well.
Benzema scored 6 UCL-goals in 24 KO-stage matches in those 4 campaigns, which isn't really good despite Madrid reaching Finals in all of them.
Nobody denies he ha great moments here & there, but Benzema wasn't important due to Cristiano carrying Madrid's goalscoring production on his own.
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Throw in Jese,Mariano and Lucas Zidane while you're at it.
Also hilarious that the poster above you didn't name Marcelo considering he was better than all of Kroos,Bale,Pepe and Di Maria
Cheers. You probably saved yourself a warning there.
Thanks to you. Looking forward to earning a like from you soon.
Are you seriously comparing shite/below average back-ups to the likes of Casemiro/Marcelo/Navas/Carvajal???
Evra is full of crap but in general Recency bias is very strong. On a side note I feel like Ribery needs to be spoken about more when talking about the greatest French attackers. He is dismissed because the numbers don't back him,for a very long time he was one of the most feared attackers in Europe and the best player in the world in 2013 but he never benfitted from the PR hype machine like Benzema is right now because people like Messi were putting up 50/60 goals a season at the same time and because he was disliked as a character. In 2022 he would be looked at as a God.
Every time Bayern Munich and Real Madrid played Ribery was more impressive to me than Benzema, especially in 2018. And I don't think that peak for peak Henry was better than him.
Robert Levanski
That's literally what half the players you mentionned were at times though.Are you seriously comparing shite/below average back-ups to the likes of Casemiro/Marcelo/Navas/Carvajal???
All of Pepe,Bale and Isco won CLs as back-ups.
Nostalgia bias is stronger than recency bias
Benzema literally scored a brace the last time he and Ribery played vs each other
Barely anyone thinks Ribery is ahead of him in France and that's as unbiased of a take as you'll get I guess.
Yeah we watch a different sport
Good post, but the last paragraph... Platini was the figurehead of one of the most aesthetically beautiful national teams to win a major. His performances in Euro '84 are arguably the best ever seen at a major, Maradona inclusive.
He scored 9 goals, this is an essential read.
There's nobody getting close to Platini from France until they better his tournament. The World Cup outdoes the Euros, but even weighted, what he did is unprecedented.
Evra is completely wrong. First of all, he said 'attacker', not striker, which means that you are trying to claim that Benzema is better than Platini and Zidane. Not even Benzema's mother would claim this. And he's also not better than Henry.
'Metrics' in which Benzema is behind Henry:
Major trophy wins in a top league where he is the best player in the team
World Cup wins (as top scorer)
Euros wins
Euros team of the tournament selections
Ballon D'Or finishes
FIFA POTY finishes
Player of the season awards in any league whatsoever
Team of the year selections in a top league
European Golden Boots (Henry has 2, Benz has 0)
Top scorer awards in any league (Henry is way ahead, Benz only did it once in France)
Top assist provider in any league (yes, Henry has done this as well)
Club record goalscorer berths
UEFA Team of the Year selections (Henry is way ahead)
FIFA World 11 selections
French Player of the Year Awards
Ballon D'Or Dream Team selection (Henry was a 3rd team selection of the greatest players to ever play the game. If you think Benzema is a legit consideration for something like that then you are frankly deluded)
No Henry is rated higher by people who actually watched him play football. There is no comparison between Henry at the peak of his powers and Benzema as footballers. None whatsoever.
PSG can't defend. It's not downplaying the quality of those teams to provide some context. I mean Chelsea were hammered by Brentford right before the Madrid meeting. Their owner is selling the club and also claiming that he was poisoned. They've done well to maintain any sort of form, to be quite honest.
He was clearly the leading player in the team during that triumphant Munich season though, which is a lot more than can be said for any of Benzema's CL wins.
Lewandowski, in the same era (and I know you consider era to be important), has been a more prolific scorer at every level. League, Champions League and international level. You can make a case for Benzema's all round ability, but as a pure scorer, Lewa is superior.
The difference in technical skill has skyrocketed? You are trying to claim that there are players around now that are more skilful than Pele? Than Maradona? Is Neymar better than Pele because he plays now? Your argument makes no sense at all.
Disagree completely. If we follow your logic, every top player 50 years from now will be better than Messi because they will be playing in a more athletic era. That is obviously not true. A great player is a great player. Moreover, by taking this line, you are ignoring all the things that made it more difficult in the past, the fact that defenders were actually allowed to tackle you, the poor equipment and pitches, no substitutes etc. Players are mollycoddled much more now.
And Platini is still a much much better footballer than Benzema. It's not just about fitness. In judging a player you look at what they can actually do. Yes there is strength and speed but also skill, control, ball mastery, vision, passing ability, IQ, playmaking ability, dribbling, leadership, finishing, creativity, originality etc etc. In most of these categories, Benzema is well below Platini (and Zidane and Henry) regardless of era.
Did you watch any tournaments prior to 1990?
This makes absolutely no sense. Platini is better than Griezmann because he is better than Griezmann, not because of the era he played in.
See above
Trying to get a team to their first ever CL win is much more difficult than playing second (or third) fiddle at a club that has won it many times and has one of the most expensively assembled squads in history.
And even now Benz cannot be described as carrying a team that still contains many of the guys from the threepeat side. He's scoring the goals but that doesn't equate to 'carrying'. Modric, Casemiro and Kroos are the main reasons for Madrid's recent success, along with (obviously) Ronaldo.
Two Ballon D'Or winners in that list while Benz has never finished in the top 3. Let's see if he can change that this season. He's tipped to. And Madrid are basically through to the semi finals so they have a great chance to lift the CL trophy this season. But if it happens, I think that would speak to how great that core group of players is, not just how great Benzema is.
Stats aren’t everything and the champions league is completely different to what it was 15+ years ago. The gap between the big/richer clubs and the smaller clubs/poorer clubs is much bigger now. Tactics and formations are different. 34 year olds are somehow peaking. A 36 year old midfielder is still playing at the highest level.
Do you believe 25-30 year old Henry in Real Madrid or Bayern today would be inferior to Benzema and Lewandowski at 30-34 years old. Also his top level career would have likely been extended a few years if he was taking whatever these guys are nowadays.
Name them. Seriously. The guy scored, assisted or created huge goals at key moments of big ties in all 4 runs
Offcourse he had his moments here and there, but players like Ronaldo, Bale, Kroos, Modric, Marcelo, Navas, Ramos were all more important than Benzema in those CL runs IMO
This is one of the myths as Benzema playing the false 9 at the time which allowed Ronaldo and Bale to be more effective nobody could of done it better it’s like Firmino at Liverpool a few seasons ago and Rooney when Ronaldo was here.
They make up for Ronaldo being more advanced which lowers there numbers but overall benefits the team
If he had said 2-3 this would have been manageable, but 8-9?! There is such a rubberband effect regarding Benzema right now and how people view him. I'm also really sad to see so many people forget just how great Henry was in his prime to think he doesn't belong with Benzema, which is a joke. Henry was the best player in the world from 2003 until about 2005 where Ronaldinho took over for a very short time, whether the individual awards reflected it or not.
Cheers for the article, great read.
Benzema was a striker that was missing a lot of goal scoring opportunities too. He brought other qualities that were also beneficial to the team, but he seriously lacked regularity then and those players were more influencial than him in those CL runs IMO.
Suarez played alongside a very prolific goal scorer in Messi, it didn't stop him from scoring a lot and in some seasons even outscoring Messi. Which is why I don't totally buy into the idea that Benzema wasn't as prolific back then just because he sacrificed his game to the service of Ronaldo.
For the record, Lewandowski has scored 59 goals from penalties in his entire career at club level and Benzema has scored 25. The main reason being, Ronaldo and Ramos were the main takers at Madrid until last season, when Ramos left.
It's like anything, there's a bit of truth in both sides. Benzema definitely sacrificed some of his opportunities (goals, penalties) for the team, but it's also used as an excuse at times to paper over some bouts of poor finishing. As far as the Suarez comparison, I think it's not quite a like-for-like situation, or playing alongside Messi vs CR7 and how the game operates for the other players, even though CR7 himself assisted Benzema a huge amount of times, but I think it's one of those cases where stats don't tell the whole story because I'm fairly certain Messi/Neymar created far more scoring opportunities for Suarez than CR7/Bale did for Benzema, and their role was different because Suarez was still supposed to be the finisher, whereas in Madrid it was CR7. We have some stat gurus out there who can feel free to prove me wrong.
Not really. For 10th Kroos and Keylor weren't there, and Marcelo was a backup. For 11th sure, 12th Bale was the backup and for 13th he definitely had a bigger impact than Kroos or Modric
For 10th, You can replace Kroos and Keylor with Du Maria and Ozil.
For the 12th, Bale was still more influencial in the run.
For the 13th, those 2 especially Modric were definitely more influencial IMO.
Ozil left before the 10th. He didn't win any.
Except Ozil wasn't there either
How?
They really weren't. Fun fact, Kroos and Modric were kind of middling that season
Lewandoski is the best, but both are getting on. Next ten years debate will be - Erling Haaland vs Dusan Vlahovic.
I'm not buying it, mainly because people watched games, even in the 1980s, and could distinguish between a statistically strong tournament and an all-time great set of performances. Paulo Rossi was top scorer for champions Italy in 1982 and barely registers in any all-time discussions, and certainly doesn't enter into any conversation about the greatest Italian players of all time. Klaus Allofs was top scorer at Euro '80 and won the tournament with West Germany, then scored twice and assisted twice en route to the World Cup final in 1986, but again does not figure in any debate about the greatest German forwards. Lineker was top scorer in 1986 and 3rd in 1990, with just about all of his goals coming in the knockout (or effective sudden death) ties, yet again is not placed alongside Moore and Charlton as England's greatest ever player, but instead struggles to even squeeze into an all-time 23-man England squad.
Good post some people are obsessed with just naming stats without adding context, we had some posters in the same breath try to argue against Hazards World Cup performances for the same reason, watch the games and it’s different.
I'll address all of your metrics one by one.
This is an entirely arbitrary metric based on a whole lot of nothing that no one would ever use + it is an extremely shaky claim. Benzema was Lyon's best player, won titles there and has been Madrid's best player since 18/19 with possibly more trophies to collect in a month's time.
Technically correct.
Except Henry was one of the least important players in that WC run and his 4 goals came in groupstage vs Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
No one in France remember Henry when thinking of WC 1998 really.
In fact Henry's NT career can pretty much be summed up by Euro 2000 because he was disappointing in every other tournament,
2002 excepted to lead the line in Zidane's absence => WC groupstage exit
2004 coming off an excellent season at Arsenal => forgettable performances
2006 coming off a CL final => pretty toothless overall, a young Ribery was our best forward
2008 asked to be a leader again => groupstage exit
Granted.
Benzema has 3 more CL though, which are worth more than an euro.
This award hasn't existed for 13 years.
Weak argument.
Absolutely false.
Henry only won it twice, both in England.
Benzema won it once in 2008 Ligue 1, once in 2020 in La Liga
He's about to win his 3rd one this year so he'll be clear of Henry in that regard.
Granted. That's down to the league he played in though. Henry would never make a TOTY if he played in 2010s La Liga in Ronaldo's team. In fact he was but a shell of himself while playing with Messi who is far better than Ronaldo at making others look good.
Benzema has already scored more club goals this season than Henry has ever managed over the course of his entire career.
And Henry wouldn't have sniffed a single golden boot in the Messi/Ronaldo era.
Benzema is about to do it this year and once again this is a moot point. Henry would have never been top scorer in a league with Messi and Ronaldo.
Benzema has more club goals despite Henry scoring 51 in the MLS.
If you meant that Henry being Arsenal's all time top scorer with 228 goals is more impressive than Benzema scoring 310+ for Madrid then that's a laughable claim. Madrid is 10 times bigger than Arsenal.
Benzema will tie Henry with 5th this year
And that's despite him being a widely controversial figure and being banned from the NT for 5 years.
You are frankly deluded if you believe Henry belongs in the 3rd team selection of greatest players to ever play the game when he's not even the 3rd best striker of the 21st century in any way shape or form.
So to resume literally all the stuff you named is either
1) Totally arbitrary stuff
2) Things that are not related to actual statistical comparison
Benzema still has more goals, more assists, more trophies, all of that in less games and less minutes and while taking less penalties and playing more of a supportive role, on top of absolutely demolishing Henry's legacy in the biggest of the club competitions
Funny stuff because all of Evra,Zidane,Govou,Papin,Di Meco,Rothen who all watched and even played with both of them have stated that Benzema is better than Henry.
Guess you ought to teach them how to understand and watch football I suppose?
I do agree there is no comparison whatsoever because Benzema is way better than Henry was and nostalgia bias is hard carrying Henry.
Henry scored 6 goals in his entire CL knockout stage career and he sure wasn't playing 2006 Italy parking a bus in front of their cage every single game.
Absolutely disagree. He wasn't the leading player against Barcelona, wasn't the leading player against Lyon and wasn't the leading player against PSG.
You're mistaking media hype for actual performances on the pitch.
No one watched these games and came out with the opinion that Lewandowski was MOTM in any of them.
In fact he wasn't the best attacking player in ANY of these games, let alone overall player.
I absolutely agree with you here.
Lewandowski is also a better pure scorer than Suarez or Henry though.
It has absolutely skyrocketed.
People would go crazy about things such as the Cruyff turn that even lower division players can perform effortlessly nowadays.
The level of fitness and skill is on a different level.
Neymar is better than Pelé because football has become an actual professional sport with extremely advanced scouting, training academies, a far more competitive environment and way more talents to pick from compared to how it was 50 or 60 years ago.
I never said these old players weren't greater than the modern ones, I said they weren't better.
Greatness is defined in your era, Pelé might very well be the greatest of all time but he sure is not the best player to ever play the game. He's nowhere near Messi in raw ability.
As for what will happen 50 years from now, only time will answer that, I struggle to see how football can become more professional than it currently is personally so I don't expect much of a gap.
Except that he absolutely is not going by the eyetest. If you actually watch both play without rose tainted nostalgia glasses, he is not a better footballer than Benzema, he is a greater one but if you put current Benzema in the 80s he would be better than Platini was and by a vast margin. You're blatanly ignoring the evolution the game has gone through, just 20 years ago players who could do nothing but poach goals were still heralded as the best forwards in the game, nowadays no top club even wants one.
All you're doing is listing arbitrary stats to fit a narrative you've been taught, it's laughable.
Yes I have.
And it takes a blind man to not see the massive gap between the modern game and pre 90 football.
World class players from that era would be above average players nowadays but not world class ones.
If Griezmann had won a WC with goal involvement in every K.O game and got to an Euro final with 6 goals in the 80s he'd be labelled as a top 5 player of all time. I'm not even joking. You just need to go on a website to bigsoccer and they'll pull out random players from the 30s with even less achievements to give them top 10 OAT shouts.
This entire part screams "I do not watch Real Madrid play"
Go tell a Madrid fan that Benzema isn't carrying that team when their entire attacking has been dead weight for four seasons and entirely reliant on him to be both a creator and a goalscorer.
We're talking of a player that has been involved in over 50% of Madrid's total goals in La Liga for 2 seasons straight.
Henry has never had a CL campaign as good as Benzema's current one, not even close, and a Prime Arsenal was a better all around team than the Madrid of the past four years overall.
You're looking at names, not actual players performances. KCM may have been the best midfield trio of the mid 2010s but they're not currently the best in the world.
- 4 cup unsalted butter
- 2 large eggs
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He barely played in those early Lyon seasons. He was their best player for maybe one of their 4 titles with him. Then he was far behind a titan at Madrid for 10 years and only now well into his 30s has come to the forefront. We'll see how he does. If I admired a striker, I'd be ashamed to have him be a second fiddle merchant and be horrendously outscored by a teammate for the vast majority of his career.
If and when Bemzema wins a World Cup and is France's top scorer, we can debate the merits of his performances v Henry's (who was very young at the time, don't forget). Until then, I'm right.
His international career reads like this:
World Cup winner
Euros winner
France's record goalscorer
Get back to me when any of this applies to Benz. Until then, I'm right.
One World Cup, one Euros and one CL beats 4 CLs IMO.
OK. Please provide an alternative for Benz
Depends on which award you are referring to. Henry only won the PFA twice but he won the Football Writers Award 3 times.
The first part of this is speculation. You have no way of knowing whether he would make that team or not. Maybe he'd be placed wide. The second part is just wrong. He wasn't Arsenal Henry maybe but in the treble winning season he scored 26 goals in 42 games and was a big part of their success that year.
Has Benzema ever had a 20 goal and 20 assist season? No.
Maybe so, but he wouldn't have spent the meat of his career playing second fiddle to someone else at club level either.
I'm sure Henry could score 310 goals for Real Madrid in one of the most expensively assembled squads in history if he played 600 games for them, like Benz has.
Whose fault is it that he's controversial?
He's there, he was sselected. A few players that are currently active were also selected. Benzema was nowhere near, and he probably won't be if it's done again in 10, 20 or 50 years.
If you note from my original post, I put metrics in inverted commas. It deliberately wasn't a statistical comparison, because comparing stats across eras is usually not a like for like judgment. It was more a list of things that Henry has achieved that Benz hasn't.
And here's your first example. Comparing a superteam like Madrid (which cost in the billions) to 90s Arsenal is not a like for like contest. Since the advent of the Champions League, the gap between the big clubs and the smaller ones and the big leagues and the smaller ones has grown more and more each year. Benzema benefited from spending most of his career with one of the most expensive squads of all time (as a secondary option).
I know about Evra. Quotes and sources for the rest please?
See above what I said about the difference between now and the past. The top four goalscorers in CL history are Ronaldo, Messi, Lewa and Benz. All current players. Do you think these are the four greatest goalscorers of all time? Or could the era have something to do with it? Is Thomas Muller the 7th greatest goalscorer of all time?
Yet strangely he was the one in Ballon D'Or contention (or would have been). I'm not sure how that happened.
Why are you bringing up Suarez?
Neymar is better than Pele? I've heard it all now.....
Nowhere near Messi in raw ability? I'd respectfully submit that you don't know what the words 'raw ability' mean.
This distinction between best and greatest only exists in your head (though I've seen others use it to be fair). It doesn't correlate with anything that's in the dictionary.
Also, you are vastly underrating the athletic abilities of players from the past. It's still human beings playing the game now, just as it was then, it's not a new evolved species.
Pele could run the 100 metres in 11 seconds, how fast can Neymar or Messi run the 100 metres? He had a vertical jump of 48 inches (the same as Michael Jordan), how high can Neymar jump?
Re the greater skill, who was better with their weak foot, Pele or Neymar? Who was better in the air, Neymar or Pele (here's a clue, Pele scored hundreds of headers). Who has the greater football IQ?
And you still haven't addressed the point about the fact that football is virtually a non contact sport now compared to the past.
Who's a better passer, Platini or Benzema? Who's a better playmaker, Platini or Benzema? Who has a better football IQ, Platini or Benzema? Who's a better leader, Platini or Benzema? Who is more skilful, Platini or Benzema? Greater vision? There's no debate.
Speculation
You keep saying this but ii's just not true. Someone used the example of Rossi earlier, I urge you to consider what they wrote.
Find Benzema's best ever Champions League goal, post it, and we'll compare it to Henry's best ever Champions League goal.
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Come on now, Benzema is brilliant but it's definitely still Lewandowski. Both miles better than Kane in any case
There's never been a more pointless activity that's had more participants than comparing players from different eras, hell even I fall to the trappings at time, but less and less so now. It's quite clear that it's simply incomparable.
Not to get too pseudo-psychology like but there's always been a desire to support the stars of your generation over the ones before or after, because I think deep down people want to believe they were alive for the best times, it's also why I think so many people believe the world would end in their lifetime, it's this subconscious desire to have been here when it mattered. On the flip side, the younger generation also feel this desire to be the witnesses of the greatest era, and some will diminish the contribution or value of past players because they see only what they want to see, that the game was slower, the players weren't as technical all over the field, etc.
This is a very simple way of putting it, but without players like Pele, you don't have Maradona, without him, you don't have Messi, without Messi, there isn't a Mbappe, without a Mbappe, there isn't whoever comes next that's looking up to him now. When Messi and CR7 first came to the game and started dominating, we hadn't seen 50 goal contributing seasons since the old days, now that Messi and CR7 have dominated a generation, you have players like Haaland and Mbappe coming through who are putting up insane numbers because it's now in the collective consciousness that it can be done, it's feasible to consistently do for a human being. Currently Mbappe, Benzema, and Lewandowski are at over 50 goal contributions in a season that hasn't even finished yet. You simply didn't see that before Messi and CR7 came around.
So I guess the overall point is that we all need to appreciate without these past legends to shape up the current ones, football would be much further behind in its development individually and collectively.
Not to get too pseudo-psychology like but there's always been a desire to support the stars of your generation over the ones before or after, because I think deep down people want to believe they were alive for the best times, it's also why I think so many people believe the world would end in their lifetime, it's this subconscious desire to have been here when it mattered. On the flip side, the younger generation also feel this desire to be the witnesses of the greatest era, and some will diminish the contribution or value of past players because they see only what they want to see, that the game was slower, the players weren't as technical all over the field, etc.
This is a very simple way of putting it, but without players like Pele, you don't have Maradona, without him, you don't have Messi, without Messi, there isn't a Mbappe, without a Mbappe, there isn't whoever comes next that's looking up to him now. When Messi and CR7 first came to the game and started dominating, we hadn't seen 50 goal contributing seasons since the old days, now that Messi and CR7 have dominated a generation, you have players like Haaland and Mbappe coming through who are putting up insane numbers because it's now in the collective consciousness that it can be done, it's feasible to consistently do for a human being. Currently Mbappe, Benzema, and Lewandowski are at over 50 goal contributions in a season that hasn't even finished yet. You simply didn't see that before Messi and CR7 came around.
So I guess the overall point is that we all need to appreciate without these past legends to shape up the current ones, football would be much further behind in its development individually and collectively.
imagine thinking football is like tennis where a single player wins all by himself..especially when Henry was a second fiddle to Zidane himself, as usual, when he was nowhere to be seen after the group stage in 98. He was exposed with France big time without Zidane missing two games due to injury in 2002 WC, could not even qualify the group stage.. If you are giving all WC, EC credits to Henry as if football is like tennis ignoring Zidane and other greats that form the core of one of the most dominant NTs ever, then he should be responsible for all failures following your logic..
Also, Henry had miserable 8 years in the CL bar 2006 with the invincibles with many stars like Vieira, Pires, Ljungberg, Bergkamp,Overmars regularly getting eliminated before the quarter finals against teams like Fiorentina, Deportivo, Valencia, Ajax, PSV etc. Probably the worst CL performing PL team ever, and led by Henry.. He could not even win the UEFA Cup losing to Galatasaray.. If not Riquelme's pk, he would not even see a final.. He needed super Barca with Xavi, Messi etc. to finally win a CL..
And, Henry played with one of the most dominant and successful NTs ever led by Zidane, owes everything he won with the NT to that super team, Brazil is the only NT that comes close to that France with Zidane..
That super team Real could only win 2 league titles in 9 years in La Liga, so super. You do not seem to be aware that there are many other super teams around like Barca, Bayern, etc. and talking as if it is much easier now to win the CL if you have a super team (completely ignoring the context that there were multiple super teams in Benzema's era), which is nonsense, see how much Guardiola is struggling even with super teams and how many times those super teams Barca, Bayern, PSG, City etc failed..
Benzema's era is probably the most competitive era of the CL where you have Real, Barca, Atletico, Juve, Chelsea, Bayern, Liverpool, City, PSG all with amazing squads all competing for the CL titles..
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No, and Kane at his best is better than Lewandowski.
Lewandowski plays against farmers every week.
as said tons of times before, stat padding in Bundesliga is nothing impressive compared to Messi's La Liga stats last year or Benzema's stats this year or Salah's PL stats.. Even Villareal, an above average La Liga team was able to beat Bayern comfortably in the QF.. so there goes Lewa's hope for Ballon D'or in 2022...
Both are very good tbf.