Benzema France | What Didier Deschamps took from the Real Madrid striker: a World Cup, a European Championship final and the record for matches with France

Didier Deschamps has done justice to Karim Benzema. The Real Madrid forward will play for France more than five years later. The French coach has included the Madrid attacker in the list of 26 players who will compete in the next European Championship. More than five years later the forward will return to defend his country, but in all this time, in which he has made sporting merits to spare to be an important part of the national team and has only been left out for extra-sporting reasons, he has been lost many historical moments. Benzema's absence began in October 2015, coinciding with the second best generation of French players the national team has had in its history. The national team in this time has become a benchmark team that was runner-up in Europe in Paris in 2016 and won the World Cup in Russia in 2018. In total, Benzema has been prevented from playing 71 games with France in all these years . Something as special as the final of the European Championship against Portugal at the Stade de France in 2016, which ended with the Portuguese victory thanks to a goal by Eder in extra time, or the duel against Croatia held in Moscow that ended with the world conquest of France: In addition, Benzema, who has 81 caps for France, could have exceeded 150 appearances for his country if he had not been prevented from playing for more than five years. Therefore, at the moment he would be the player who would have worn the blue shirt the most times, surpassing the 142 participations of Lilian Thuram. It would also be much closer to Henry's 51 goals, as he left his scoring tally at 27.