Official: Karim Benzema will miss the Qatar 2022 World Cup due to injury during training

Karim Benzema presented a muscle ailment in his left leg and will not participate in Qatar 2022

French national team striker Karim Benzema will miss the World Cup Qatar 2022 due to a muscle injury that he presented during a training session this Saturday, three days after the debut of the French national team in the fair against Australia.

“Blow to the quadriceps of the left thigh, Karim Benzema. He is forced to give up participating in the World Cup.”

“The whole team shares Karim’s sadness and wishes him a speedy recovery,” the French Federation wrote in a statement on social media.

Karim Benzema He felt severe muscle pain in his left leg, in a different area from the one that had been bothering him in recent weeks and which had caused him, until now, not to train with the rest of the team.

The 34-year-old Ballon d’Or player joined collective training this Saturday for the first time, but, after participating in several exercises, in which the coach, Didier Deschamps, included him in the starting group, he had to leave the session.

The team has already had to face the losses of the center-back Presnel Kimpembe and from the striker Christopher Nkunkurespectively replaced by Axel Disasi and Kolo Muani.

The lowering of Benzema It would be of more weight, due to the good performance that the Ballon d’Or had been having with the French team, in which he had become a key piece of the Deschamps team as an offensive partner with Kylian Mbappé.

The striker was not at the World Cup in Russia, removed from the team by Deschamps after being accused of complicity in blackmail, a case that earned him a prison sentence without serving.

After three and a half years of absence, the coach lifted his veto before the last Euro Cup, in which he began to reveal himself as an important figure in the team, in parallel to the great performances he signed with the real Madrid.

It is not the first disappointment that would take Benzema in a World Cup In South Africa in 2010, when at the age of 22 he was one of the most promising strikers in France and was already at Real Madrid, he was left out of the group because he was not the undisputed starter at his club, despite the fact that he had scored two goals in the phase classification.

The footballer did not hide his bitterness. Four years later, already with Deschamps on the bench, he signed a great performance in Brazil, where he was the undisputed starter, he scored three goals in the group stage but could not avoid the elimination of the Gauls in the quarterfinals against a launched Germany.

The following year the blackmail scandal broke out, which separated him from the team and left him out of the European Championship that France played on its territory.

He returned in mid-2021, on the eve of another Euro Cup, the third he has played with France.

The leading candidate to replace Benzema in the eleven before Australia is the veteran Olivier Giroud36, who has returned to the team after months of absence and who is two goals away from equaling Thierry Henry as the all-time top scorer in France.