Real Madrid hope Benzema continues uncanny knack against English sides against Man City

Just the four goals so far in his five games in the knockout stage of this Uefa Champions League. By recent standards, that counts as a dry spell for Karim Benzema.

This time a year ago, he was on 10 from five in the business end of club football’s most elite competition and he was football’s match-winner supreme.

Rewind 12 months and Benzema’s role as orchestrator-in-chief for a series of breathtaking Real Madrid comebacks was commandeering the votes that would have him crowned as winner of the Ballon d’Or.

He was the captain who lifted the European Cup last May, and in a sport where the English Premier League holds so many aces – including, in Manchester City’s Erling Haaland, the game’s finest young centre-forward – Benzema, the complete No 9, was again and again proving English football’s greatest nemesis.

At issue on Wednesday, as perhaps the strongest English club side of recent memory, a Manchester City with momentum, close in on a possible Treble, is whether Benzema can sustain that habit.

As he shakes hands with his opposite number ahead of kick-off at the fortress that is City’s Etihad Stadium, it is to their captain Madrid look first to swing the balance of a Champions League semi-final poised at 1-1.

But he is in his 36th year now. He had a relatively quiet night in the first leg in Madrid, second fiddle to a dashing Vinicius Junior. Injuries have disrupted his season, although to describe him as out of form would be to exaggerate. Benzema scored three hat-tricks in Spanish domestic football in April alone and will come into Wednesday having been rested at the weekend.

City would be inclined to regard a low-key Benzema as simply ominous when they recall how effectively he seizes his moments. He did that in the semi-final against them 12 months ago.

In the Etihad leg, Benzema’s volley began what would become a remarkable salvage operation with Madrid trailing 2-0. His penalty, impudently chipped past Ederson, made the final score in Manchester 4-3 in City’s favour.

“If we had that game from last year again, I’d take it,” smiled Pep Guardiola, City’s manager, on Tuesday. “But I don’t think it will happen. This competition is uncertain, there are things you can’t control. We have a plan and we’ll try to secure it, and adapt as much as possible.”

Real Madrid 1 Manchester City 1: Player ratings

REAL MADRID RATINGS: Thibaut Courtois – 8. Produced three vital saves but was powerless to stop De Bruyne’s stunning strike. A top performance from a top goalkeeper. Reuters

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Guardiola’s dread is a second leg that veers out of City’s control like last May’s semi-final did at its tail-end. Benzema’s volleyed cross, converted by Rodrygo, launched a comeback from 5-3 down on aggregate in the last minute of normal time. In extra-time a penalty from Benzema completed the astonishing turnaround for a 6-5 aggregate win.

The Madrid captain’s aura had won that penalty, an anxious Ruben Dias tripping Benzema.

It was the flourishing conclusion to a record-breaking spurt from the Frenchman. A hat-trick at Stamford Bridge in the previous round had put Madrid in charge of their quarter-final. Being Madrid, there was still drama left in that tie, Chelsea erasing the lead. The comeback would be completed, inevitably, by Benzema, in extra-time.

When Madrid were obliged to play Liverpool in the last-16 phase of their defence of their Champions League title, he picked up again his pattern of punishing English sides. Benzema struck a brace of goals at Anfield, and the only goal of the home, second leg. He scored the first Madrid goal in the 4-0 aggregate win against Chelsea in this season’s quarter-final. That’s 20 of his career Champions League goals against English clubs; only Lionel Messi has amassed more facing Premier League defences.

Guardiola has urged his players to ignore that back catalogue, be immune to the aura of Madrid and their serial European champions, the five-time winners of the competition like Benzema and Luka Modric.

“Anything in the past doesn’t exist,” Guardiola said on Tuesday. “I say to the players: live it, enjoy the moment. Don’t worry about the past, perform with the best you have. Be ourselves, don’t complicate things, relax.”

Specifically, he has instructed his players, four wins away from achieving a Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League Treble, that “we have to be better than at the Bernabeu.”

It means better exploiting Haaland’s potency, the Norwegian tightly marked in Madrid. “We need to adjust a little bit,” said Guardiola, “be more fluent and create more chances for our strikers, get more balls in easy positions.

“It’s not necessary to tell them how good Madrid are,” Guardiola added. “They felt it last season and this season. We know their transitions, their quality. It’s impossible to pick out a defect in the opposition, but we’ve worked on a few things.”