Real Madrid Legend Reveals Plans To Return To Club

Real Madrid icon Karim Benzema revealed plans to return to the club in retirement when speaking on the Los Amigos de Edu program hosted by popular Spanish soccer reporter Edu Aguirre.

The former Ballon d’Or winner fled the Bernabeu in 2023, after completing a 25-trophy haul across a 14-year tenure that saw him become a Madridista legend and five-time Champions League king.

He currently plies his trade at Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia. Yet at the age of 37, it is natural that the striker has to field questions about retirement and plans in the next phase of his life.

“When I retire I want to be close to football,” Benzema confessed, though he didn’t commit to saying that he wishes to man the dugout as a coach.

“I don’t know, this is something that seems more complicated to me than being a player,” Benzema stated before adding: “What I want is to be close to [Real Madrid President] Florentino [Perez] when I retire.”

“I was recently with him in Madrid,” Benzema revealed, with these comments a nod towards taking some sort of behind-the-scenes role in the Spanish capital in the way of being a sporting director or some such.

Benzema said that upon signing for Madrid from Lyon in 2009, he told his father “that I would be at the club for as long as he was,” in relation to the president.

“Florentino was the first person I called when I decided I was leaving. The truth is that he didn’t quite understand it, but I told him that youngsters like Vinicius and Rodrygo were already ready,” Benzema concluded on the matter.

When he does decide to hang up his boots and walk off into the sunset, at least in a playing context, Benzema is sure to be honored by Perez and the club where he etched his name into the history books.

First acting as a wing man for Cristiano Ronaldo, he then became a protagonist on the front line as the mentioned Brazilian prodigies were cutting their teeth in Europe.

As things stand, Benzema is the last Ballon d’Or winner to wear the fabled Los Blancos shirt after lifting the sport’s highest individual honor in 2022.

In 2024, Vinicius Jr. was expected to follow his lead but came up short at the last minute as a runner-up to Manchester City’s Rodri.