Champions League, Real Madrid-City: Benzema-Halland challenge tonight

The Ballon d’Or Karim Benzema against who, Erling Haaland, of Oscar of the best of all will win in series, perhaps already starting from the current year. Real-City thrives on suggestions and stories, images and icons: for a moment you can even get out of the challenge of the noble Ancelotti-Guardiola benches.

In Madrid it’s hot, a bit unusual for the season, even if they’re used to it in these parts: in the Plaza Mayor, the fans arriving from Manchester unfurled a long line of banners to mark their presence. The new Santiago Bernabeu is still a tangle of cables and structures to define the exteriors, inside is the usual temple of world football: what better scenario to see two of the attackers at work who know how to make your head spin?

Benzema is 35, Haaland thirteen years younger. The Frenchman from Real, in the last four editions of the Champions League, travels at an average of one goal every 105′, the giant, starting this year, at City touches the tip of a goal every 58′: Haaland scores above all with his left foot, Karim prefers the right foot and the spread between the two in the way of getting married gives him the head because if Benzema uses it often (18 his scorer on the 90 overall goals in Europe that counts at altitude), Haaland a little less (only 4 his goals in the ranking of specificity out of the 35 already mentioned).

Benzema has (almost) won a Champions League alone, last year: 15 seals of a timeless striker, indeed time improves him up to bringing him to the deepest recognition for a player, the Ballon d’Or, in the last vote. Haaland has a lot of time ahead of him and, in the meantime, he can enjoy updating the records of the Premier League – 35 goals scored so far, an all-time record – and of the Champions League itself because no one has ever reached 35 goals in a number of tenders so small, twenty-seven. «Compared to a season ago – says the coach of the Spanish Ancelotti – they can count on one more presence: Haaland. Something will change…” Guardiolo listens and does not deny. “When we’re in trouble we can ask him for a hand: we’re not here to seek revenge for the semi-final last May, but – according to the City coach – with an extra Haaland we have a better chance”. The challenge of the benches can wait: the scene is taken by the two most awaited and watched center forwards in the world.