We can all dream Where is your vote for benzema BTW He still has 0 votes on this thread and you are defending him like this
As usual, SayWhatIWant is overrating a Real Madrid player, but Benzema actually *is* a very good playmaker IMO. I’m virtually always impressed with several of his passes when I watch Real Madrid matches.
As @poetgooner implied above, Neymar is an example. Benzema has always impressed me with his passing though, so while I don’t rate him as highly in this regard as you do, I do think it’s a major strength for him.
Yes, Neymar may be superior in terms of ability, I would tend to agree. But it is not backed up concretely with results. Benzema has the CL pedigree.
Leaving aside Neymar, I also think there are some other great playmaking attackers that are in the mix. For instance, Thomas Muller is a great playmaker (although his role is weird and not really a striker, so not sure if you’d count him for these purposes). And, while I know people like to dunk on English players as overrated, I think Harry Kane’s playmaking is genuinely really impressive, particularly in the last few years.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Harry Kane strike me as superior passers of the ball to Karim Benzema, but perhaps there's more being considered as playmaking than just passing in which case Benz could be better overall.
Can somebody explain where is the talent of likes Lewa, Benzema, Mandzhukic, Kane ect? Only sense of the goal like Gerd Muller had? Ibra and Suarez at least have great dribbling, shot, pass and technique.
Van Persie in Euros, World Cup, Champions League, UEFA Cup Knockout Games: 3 NPG in 38 games (Olympiakos x2 + Barcelona) He was very good in the Premier League from 2011- 2013 but this was a weak era, the 2012/13 United team are one of the worst Premier League winning teams ever.
@carlito86 I do not wish to make this post an ad hominem, but you should know that while reading the thread, it is very clear that you are biased against Benzema. Sure i do not consider him to be the best of the 4, actually no user did if we go by the poll. But your obsession to downplay his achievements is simply ridiculous.
I think that "Striker" by definition is the player who is positioned closest to the opponent's goal and whose primary function is to score goals rather than create them. And the topic cut is "in the last decade", which corresponds to the period between 2011 and 2020. In this sense, for me it is very clear which of these players fits better in the title of the thread. Lewandowski has 43 more goals than any of these other three players between the season 10/11 and 19/20. The goal Ranking from 10/11 to 19/20 is: Lewandowski - 349 goals Zlatan Ibrahimovic - 306 goals Suarez - 289 goals Benzema - 240 goals
Maybe it's just for clubs but I don't think so. I got these numbers from the trachta thread Goal contribution of the best players
On the subject of the playmaking of these players (at least in terms of making the final ball), I think it’s interesting to look at the Big Chances Created stat. This is a stat that measures chances created that had a high xG (I believe the threshold is at least a 0.3 xG, but am not *certain*). Broadly speaking, these are the types of chances created that are what we really think about when we talk about great final balls (though it does also sweep in things like an easy sideways pass for a tap in). On SofaScore, we have data on Big Chances Created starting in the summer of 2016. I’ve tallied up this data for league play, Champions League (as well as Europa League where relevant), and major NT tournaments in that timeframe for these four players. This is a lot of data, since it includes over 300 matches for all of them but Ibrahimovic (who, only has 158 matches counted here, and, admittedly, gets the short end of the stick a bit with this analysis since this timeframe is mostly the tail end of his career). I’ve calculated Big Chances Created per 90 minutes, using minutes data from FBref. Big Chances Created Per 90 mins (League + CL + Major NT Competitions from mid-2016 onwards): 1. Luis Suarez: 0.387 2. Zlatan Ibrahimovic: 0.354 3. Karim Benzema: 0.342 4. Robert Lewandowski: 0.275 This does validate our general understanding that Robert Lewandowski is a step below the other three in playmaking. It does not, however, support the suggestion that Benzema is better than the others in this regard. ________________________ To give you all some context regarding where the above numbers stand compared to some other players, here’s the numbers for some others players: Lionel Messi: 0.863 Kevin De Bruyne: 0.738 Neymar: 0.734 Thomas Muller: 0.619 Kylian Mbappe: 0.569 Harry Kane: 0.296 Cristiano Ronaldo: 0.289
Before some overzealous/over excited Barcelona fans run with this lets just make crystal clear that Cristiano Ronaldo in his actual prime is nearer the top of this list rather than the bottom Lionel Messi blew him away to space and back in this regard since 2014/15 but not before 2010/11 to 2013/14 La liga and champions league Cristiano Ronaldo 77 big chances created 15547 minutes played 172 matches 0.45 big chances created per 90 Lionel Messi 91 big chances created 14746 minutes played 164~ matches played 0.55 big chances created per 90 https://www.messivsronaldo.app/detailed-stats/big-chances-created/ And of course this doesn't even include Ronaldos best season as a creator either where he was definitely ahead of Messi too(and almost every other player in the league or even Europe) 60 - David Silva created 60 goalscoring chances from open play in La Liga in 09/10, only 3 players (Ronaldo,Xavi,Kaká) created more. Threat— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) June 30, 2010 Competing with Messi/higuain in goals Competing with Messi in dribbles Competing with xavi/sneijder in chance creation At the same time in the same season 2 red cards and 2 months out injured prevented him for putting on maybe the best season ever or at least one to really challenge Messis absolute best level It was still remarkable for a debut campaign Bringing it back Overall of course Messi is vastly superior in this regard but i take issue with people using sofascore and these other sites that only go back to when Cristiano was 31 years old in 2016 and obviously was nowhere near as dynamic as he previously was
How does that website have data on “big chances created” dating back to 2010-2011? Do we know where it’s getting it from? A very quick glance at the data suggests they line up with the data I’ve got from SofaScore, but SofaScore doesn’t have data on this stat further back than the 2015-2016 season. I’d certainly be curious to see the data going back to 2010-2011 for quite a lot of players.