Real Madrid weren't ready for this. Just ask Carlo Ancelotti.
"We can't be happy that he's leaving, but we must respect his decision," the Real Madrid manager said ahead of Sunday's season finale against Athletic Bilbao. "He has earned the right to decide what he wants to do. It was a surprise for everyone. It was only this morning that we found out. He told us about his decision, and I told him I respected his decision and that I was grateful for all he'd done with me."
The "he" in question, of course, is defending Ballon d'Or winner Karim Benzema. The club expected their center-forward to stick around for one more season, but the rumored €400 million, two-year contract was too much to pass up. He'll join the last superstar Real Madrid had to replace, Cristiano Ronaldo, in the Saudi Pro League.
And so, all of a sudden, arguably the premier destination in world soccer has a massive hole at the premium position in their starting lineup. And as soon as Madrid makes whatever big-money move they'll have to make, it'll have ripple effects across all of Europe. So who might Madrid bring in? And what would that mean for everyone else?
What was Benzema at Real Madrid, anyway?
On Sunday, Ancelotti spoke vaguely about the kind of player Madrid might want to bring in to replace Benzema: "We want to sign a striker that can score goals and link up well -- so, a striker that plays football well."
It sounds silly -- "a striker that plays football well" -- but that's what Benzema was.
Over the past five or so years, we've seen something of a divide between the players being used as strikers at Europe's top clubs. Some teams opted for players who weren't really strikers. Rather, they sent for players who might've been attacking midfielders in another era -- guys who made it easier to keep possession, pressed well from the front and facilitated the goal-scoring of their wingers and midfielders. They were less involved in goal-scoring but more involved in just about everything else. Others went for more classical in-the-box strikers, who stretched the backlines and feasted upon the creativity that came from their team's inside forwards and fullbacks.
It seemed like you either had one or the other, and the one you had dictated how you built the rest of your team. That is, unless you had Benzema -- in which case you had both because outside of his lack of pressing, Benzema did it all.
The France star leaves Madrid as the club's second-leading scorer all time, and only three players have scored more goals in LaLiga history. The same goes for the Champions League; he signs off as fourth all time behind Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski. But before Ronaldo left, Benzema fell into that former camp, a striker who'd drift across the field to facilitate possession and create spaces for Madrid's two superstar wingers -- Ronaldo and Gareth Bale -- to crash into. He scored just five goals and assisted 10 in his final season with Ronaldo.
The goals shot up to 21 in his first post-Ronaldo season, but he kept all of the other stuff, too. Among forwards in the Big Five leagues over the past 365 days, per the site FBref, Benzema ranks in the 97th percentile or above among forwards in expected assists, passes attempted, pass-completion percentage, progressive passes completed and touches inside the penalty area.
In other words, he's a striker who plays football well.
Who can replace him?
In short, no one. Here's a quick visual overview of what Benzema did this past season, and how it compares with the other forwards in Europe's Big Five leagues:
To briefly define the above -- all stats are measured per 90 minutes:
- DfIntervn: Defensive interventions
- Aerial Won: Aerial duels won
- ProgCarry: Progressive carries
- PsCmpInBox: Passes completed into the box
- TouchOpBox: Touches inside the box
- xA: Expected assists
- ExpGExPen: Non-penalty expected goals
- Touches: Touches
The number of other forwards who completed at least two passes into the penalty area, made at least five progressive carries, created at least 0.2 expected assists, generated at least 0.5 non-penalty expected goals and took at least 45 touches per 90 minutes? It's zero.
So, I think there are two ways forward for Madrid here.
One is to try to replace Benzema's star power or overall impact, but with a different type of player. Both Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland would fit that bill, and according to ESPN's Alex Kirkland and Rodrigo Faez, some at the club admit that a move for one of them was planned for Benzema's expected 2024 departure. If they can't wait -- and therefore can't acquire either of them -- then the two names that seem like they could be available this summer are Tottenham's Harry Kane and Napoli's Victor Osimhen.
Osimhen is about as far as you can get from Benzema: he lives inside the penalty area, dominates in the air and doesn't do much else outside of generating shots and scoring goals. Kane is much closer to the Benzema archetype, which is perhaps why Madrid see him as the best option, as Kirkland and Faez reported Monday. Yet it's not quite a perfect fit: Kane has dropped much deeper than Benzema for Tottenham, and his involvement in buildup play tends to be in transition, rather than in helping break down defenses from inside and around the penalty area.
Perhaps with better teammates around him -- most notably, midfielders who can progress the ball -- and on a team that has more possession, Kane would shift into more of a Benzema-type role, but we just haven't seen him do it yet. When Spurs had more of the ball when he was younger, Kane was more of a traditional striker. His all-around impact has only developed in teams that emphasized fast transitions. On top of that, he'll require something like a nine-figure transfer fee to acquire, and he'll be 30 by the time next season starts. Moves for that much money rarely work out. Moves for players in that age range rarely work out. A move for Kane would attempt to thread both of those tiny needles, at the same time.
The other option would be to keep the powder dry for whenever Mbappe or Haaland are available while also trying to replace Benzema's production in the aggregate. Two other rumored names are free agent Roberto Firmino and Chelsea's much maligned Kai Havertz. While neither will provide the kind of prolific goal-scoring Benzema did, they both can play a similar role in possession, they're both much better in the air and they're each miles better than Benzema was defensively.
Given that Firmino won't require a fee and Chelsea will need to shave salary/shrink their squad, perhaps Madrid could just sign both? That would make things easier on an aging Firmino, who only barely broke the 1,200-minute mark this season, and it might also take some pressure off Havertz to lead the line for Madrid, week in and week out. Over the course of a full season, they could combine to approximate the "playing football well" part of the equation while also strengthening Madrid defensively.
With their savvy in possession and off-ball movement, they'd both facilitate the goal-scoring, ballcarrying and off-ball running of Rodrygo and Vinicius. They'd also be ideal foils for Jude Bellingham's runs from midfield into the box (if his move from Borussia Dortmund is finalized, as expected). Maybe with improvements from the former two on the attacking end and the arrival of the latter this summer, the attack could come close to maintaining last season's levels while the defense improves. Plus, if you sign both of them, it doesn't preclude you from going after Mbappe or Haaland next summer.
What happens to everyone else?
Unless the Madrid brass read this piece and change their mind, I'd rate it "very unlikely" that they opt for that kind of in-between "Firmino and Havertz" move. If they did do it, signing Firmino wouldn't have much of an effect across the market. He's a free agent; Liverpool had already planned for his departure.
If they sign Havertz, Chelsea will have an even greater need for a center-forward. However, it seems likely that they'll still try to sign a traditional center-forward anyway. Given what we know about how the new ownership group operates, they'll chase after any and everyone, without any regard for cost.
The bigger domino, though, would be if Madrid were to complete the move for Kane. Were that to happen, Tottenham would suddenly have a massive influx of cash, and they'd be without their best player. I'd think that a decision to let Kane leave would also be a decision that some kind of rebuild was in order. If Kane leaves for Madrid, maybe they try to move on from Heung-Min Son, too. At the very least, letting go of Kane would be an admission that the team would take a step back in the short term.
As for whom Tottenham could sign? While they don't seem particularly close to the Champions League right now, they have more money than all but eight or nine other clubs in the world -- plus whatever massive fee they would get for Kane.
They could try to convince Osimhen to come: London, massive raise, huge stadium, and we'll build the team around you! They could try to reignite a move for Inter Milan's Lautaro Martinez, or maybe it's more someone in that Jonathan David, Randal Kolo Muani, Rasmus Hojlund, Goncalo Ramos, Folarin Balogun or Marcus Thuram tier of player: the 20-to-25-year-olds who could be but aren't quite yet stars, the kind of guys Inter Milan might try to replace Lautaro with? And that's not isn't even mentioning the older, up-in-the-air options out there -- Romelu Lukaku, Ollie Watkins, Ivan Toney -- or a struggling but still young name like Dusan Vlahovic.
Thuram, specifically, wouldn't need a transfer fee, so Spurs could offer him a larger salary and then devote their other resources to the rest of the roster. Like they did with Gareth Bale, they might try to spread the return around, rather than just use it all on one or two expensive direct replacements.
Maybe, then, the bigger second domino would be elsewhere: What would Manchester United do? Kane to Madrid would mean that Kane doesn't go to United, who'd be left to find a center-forward elsewhere. In a strange way, perhaps Kane to Madrid would make it more likely that Osimhen leaves Napoli because it makes it more likely that Osimhen goes to Manchester United? And if that happens, then the defending Serie A champs would be flush with cash and suddenly in the market for someone likely from that same tier of center-forwards that it seems likely Spurs would also be targeting.
Oh, and then there's Bayern Munich, who seem like they too will bring in a traditional striker -- after completing their worst season in a decade and giving up on the idea that Sadio Mane could be their starting center-forward.
Before Benzema suddenly left for Saudi Arabia, there were two superclubs looking for strikers this summer, Manchester United and Bayern, and there were two theoretical supertransfer options (Osimhen and Kane) at the position. Now that Benzema is gone -- but not to one of those clubs -- there might be three superclubs looking at two players, and the newest entrant to the sweepstakes will probably get their first-choice if they really want him.
If one of Bayern or United miss out on the other guy, then they'll have to dip down into the next tier of players, which will then make it harder for Napoli and/or Spurs to replace the stars who created the cascading effect in the first place. And that will then make the competition even more intense for those savvy midtier clubs -- the Lilles and Benficas and Atalantas of the world -- who need to reload and want to find the next guy they can sell on for a massive fee, and that will then lead to battles between all the clubs those teams typically acquire players from, and on and on and on...
A week ago, clubs across Europe had likely sketched out their list of striker targets for the summer. A lot of them, probably, had their options listed in some kind of ranked order, by whomever they wanted most. Then, all of a sudden, everything changed -- and not just in Madrid.
Everyone, including Bayern Munich and Manchester United, might already be figuring out their backup plan.