French national team: Giroud ‘wrote’ Benzema immediately after he withdrew from the World Cup

The misfortune of some is the happiness of others. When Karim Benzema was forced out of France in Qatar on 20 November due to an injury, Olivier Giroud lost a teammate… but was given a starting spot that he kept until Homer’s final, which resulted in a penalty against Argentina. In an interview with Canal Football Club, the Blues striker revisited the episode.

“I texted him as soon as he left as we couldn’t say goodbye to him and it was sincere and spontaneous,” Giroud said. I told him that we were disappointed, that I was disappointed by his departure. When his departure was announced, Benzema immediately boarded a Doha-Madrid flight early in the morning without saying goodbye to his teammates, which took some of them by surprise.

“Always the same who try to look for problems”

“After football, sometimes injuries are good,” Giroud continued. It has done me good, but I have never seen me make a statement or say that I feel relieved or joyful when he leaves. Always the same people trying to look for problems in this team when there are none. “The two players were really often opposed by the fans, the No. 9 Milanese took advantage of the absence of the Madrid player to a great extent to take the top of the Blues.

This façade “opposition” came to a head in 2020, when Benzema summed up the debate between him and Giroud to a showdown between F1 and karting. But in public, relations between the two men have always been good: when his compatriot returned to the French national team in 2021, Giroud, in particular, explained that he considered “Karim’s recall something positive.” »