Euro 2008 Player Profile: Karim Benzema

Name: Karim Benzema
Team: France
Group: C; Italy, Netherlands, Romania
Caps (Goals): 9 (3) – as of May 2, 2008
DOB: December 19, 1987 (20 years old)
Position: Striker (the top Ligue 1 scorer for the 07-08 season)
Club Team: Olympique Lyonnais (Lyon)

One indicator of French striker Karim Benzema’s worldwide appeal and growing international popularity? He’s only twenty years old, but as of this writing his Wikipedia page has been translated into seventeen languages.

There is a reason for this. There is also a reason that his name has been linked to every large club in Europe despite the fact that he is committed to Lyon until 2013. His speed and skill on the ball, combined with his ability to evade both defenders and goalkeepers and put the ball in the net, have made him a player to pay attention to.

Benzema was born in France and is of Algerian descent; this Algerian heritage qualified him to play for either national team. France coach Raymond Domenech saw the striker’s potential early and realized that he would need to stake his claim to keep Karim from playing for Algeria. Thus Benzema received his first call-up for a friendly against Greece in November, 2006, when he was just eighteen years old. He was unable to play that game due to injury, but the call-up was enough to cause him to decide to commit his future to France. He received his first cap for the senior side in March, 2007 in a friendlyagainst Austria, where he also scored his first international goal. (Link to the video is here.)

The 2007-08 season proved to be a breakout period for Benzema. As of this writing, he is the leading goalscorer in Ligue 1 with 20 goals, and he has scored in all competitions he has played in: International, Ligue 1, Champions League, League Cup and French Cup.

Benzema is a “pure product” of the Olympique Lyonnais system, having been born in Lyon. He came up through the youth ranks and has played with the club since 1996. He got his first taste of youth international play in 2003-4 with the France U-16s, but it was in 2004-5 season where he experienced real success, scoring fourteen goals for the U-17s as they took the U-17 European Championships. (His U-17 teammates included sometime senior France teammates Samir Nasri and Hatem Ben Arfa.)

Barring injury, Benzema is almost certain to be included in Raymond Domenech’s France squad. And since first-choice strikers Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka have not had great years with their clubs — Barcelona and Chelsea, respectively, where neither is starting regularly and both are being played out of position — chances are that we’ll be seeing a fair amount of Benzema in Euro 2008.

For more on Benzema and France, be sure to check out our France team page.
And for more Lyon news, you can’t beat Lyon Offside.

You can see Benzema in action in the following video:

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