Karim Benzema is having the best season of his career and is heading for the Ballon d’Or – two hat-tricks in this Champions League and first place in goal assist in Europe. Obviously, Real Madrid have gained super strength, but there is a problem with that. With Benzema, Madrid moves PSG off the road and surpasses the powerful Chelsea, without him they get 4 in Clasico (releasing Modric in the attack) and fly out of the Cup from Athletic. Yes, these defeats have many causes and it is wrong to reduce everything to Benzema, but it is obvious that there is an addiction problem. It is also recognized by Carlo Ancelotti. “We don’t have other players of Karim’s level,” the coach said after Athletic. We haven’t changed the plan. We played defensively, but we couldn’t [advance].” Before Barcelona, Ancelotti confirmed that Benzema isRAel’s main hope this season: “I’m not worried that he won’t play tomorrow. We have time to come out at the end of the season and make a difference”. Ancelotti added after Chelsea: “He is strengthening the lead every day, he feels more and more important.I think that’s what makes the difference”. Are there other clubs in Europe that are so dependent on one player? Dependence can be understood in different ways, the key player is not always the one who scores or gives away. But here we are discussing the contribution of Benzema, so let’s simplify – we will concentrate on attacking indicators. • The main observation is that there are only players from big clubs in the top five, although we would like to remind you that all top-5 teams were included in the sample. Abraham, Kane, Mbappe, Benzema and Lewandowski are involved in more than 40% of their teams’ attacks – either hitting or throwing a pre-kick pass.- Tottenham and West Ham each have two players in the top 20. Harry Kane and Son Heung-Min are two centers of attraction at Tottenham, but sometimes they work in tandem. The picture is similar at West Ham – Bowen and Antonio are different types of players, but they finish (xG 9.4 and 9.2) and create (xA 5.2 and 6.3) in almost the same volume. Of course, in such cases it is impossible to talk about the club’s dependence on one player.
- Neither Liverpool nor Man City, the two strongest clubs in Europe at the moment , are in the top 20 . For comparison: the percentage of involvement of Salah in attacks is 33.4 (35th in the top 5). City go even further. The most “influential” player is Phil Foden, but he only participates in 20% of his team’s attacks as a finisher or as an assistant, 192nd in the top 5.
Logical assumption: a great performer is great, but is it really good when everything is focused on him? The example of City and Liverpool shows that it is not. If a top club is choking when a superstar has a bad day or is covered, then they’re in big trouble.
City and Chelsea – a variety of threats, Bayern and Real Madrid – a different story
Let’s go through the favorites of the current Champions League in detail and see in what proportions the execution of moments is divided there. Here we are only talking about the finishing blows, without taking into account the expected assists. That is why the percentage of Benzema is lower than in the first picture. An important clarification: these percentages do not say anything at all about the qualities of a football player, but only about how involved he is in completing chances.
