Anwar Ibrahim (Cairo)
Real Madrid managed to achieve the best “Remontada” in the European Champions League this season, when he turned the table on Paris Saint-Germain, in the second leg of the round of 16 of the tournament, and won it with a wonderful three, after the latter was ahead with a goal for nothing until the 61st minute.
The brilliant French Karim Benzema, the leader of “Merenge”, was the man of the match and its first star, with the three goals “hat-trick” he scored in just 17 minutes, to the point that the fans of the “Santiago Bernabeu” went crazy with joy, and amazed football experts and analysts.
Benzema was on time, and if his compatriot Kylian Mbappe, the Saint-Germain striker, is the undisputed star of the first half, with the goal he scored, and the many opportunities he missed, Benzema extinguished his glow, and surpassed him in the second half of the match, and scored 3 crazy goals in the 61st, 76th and 78th minutes. , including two goals, with a difference of only two minutes!, to pull the rug from under the feet of all Saint-Germain stars Messi, Neymar, Verratti, Mbappe and others.
Benzema entered the history of the tournament from its widest doors, as he became the fourth top scorer in its long history with 79 goals (67 with Real, 12 with his former team Olympique Lyon), and only Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo (140 goals), Argentine Lionel Messi (125 goals), and the Polish Robert Lewandowski (85 goals).
More importantly, Benzema surpassed the Spanish-Argentine legend Alfredo Di Stefano in the ranking of Real Madrid’s historical scorers, and advanced to third place with 309 goals in various competitions, and was only preceded by Ronaldo first in the standings with 451 goals, and Raul II with 323 goals.
Benzema scored 30 goals this season and assisted 12 goals in 33 matches in various competitions, outperforming his fellow Brazilian teammates, Vinicius Junior (13 goals), and Spain’s Marco Asensio (8 goals).
And what a great joy, expressed by Didier Deschamps, coach of the French national team, after the two main stars brilliance in the “Roosters” attack, a few months before the start of the 2022 World Cup, where he expressed his happiness with the high performance of his two attacking stars, stressing that he expected them to shine, because they proved This season, they outperformed all other “roosters” strikers.