Master Karim explodes driven by the 'padawan' Vini

In his presentation as coach of Real Madrid, Carlo Ancelotti said something that was then considered a

.

The solution to the scoring shortage after Cristiano left seemed very simple: "Benzema has to score 50 goals, instead of 30. Vinicius has to score more...".

The Frenchman had only scored more than 30 10 years ago, in the 2011-2012 campaign, when he added 32. Ancelotti was confident in a scoring explosion from a footballer who was going to turn 34 a few months later.

Not to mention the background of Vinicius's aim.

So his phrase was taken as a summer excess that would go up in smoke, like so many others.

And yet, the explosion has occurred, especially in the last month and a half.

Benzema returned on February 15 from an injury that stopped him a month to play against PSG in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16, and he left Paris empty-handed.

But in the following seven games he has scored 13 goals, including two hat-tricks in consecutive rounds of the European Cup, in the second leg against PSG (3-1) and on Wednesday in the first leg of the quarterfinals against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge (1 -3).

With eight league games and four Champions League games to go, if Madrid reaches the final, the Frenchman has already surpassed his best goalscoring record by 20%: he has 37 goals, which means 1.09 goals every 90 minutes.

If last season he had scored at that rate, he would have reached 47 goals, not so far from Ancelotti's

.

But the Italian coach's solution included another fundamental element, the flourishing of Vinicius.

Benzema looked very lonely since Cristiano left, without finding reliable companions.

If the data of the subsequent campaigns is reviewed, an effort to contribute more to the annotation is appreciated.

In his last league match with the Portuguese, for every 90 minutes of play he had chances worth 0.45 goals, according to the Statsbomb model.

The next one rose to 0.48;

and then another rung, at 0.50;

until the last one reaches 0.55.

However, the big jump did not come until the finisher Vinicius appeared.

Now Benzema has 0.83 expected goals every 90 minutes.

The Frenchman has always been very aware of the importance of the ecosystem in which a striker develops.

Since he shared the front with Cristiano.

For years he put his talent at the service of the Portuguese's effectiveness, as he has explained in several interviews.

After the cycle with the Portuguese, he has looked for his own Benzema, and has spent time modeling Vinicius since he arrived at the age of 18.

And although sometimes he has been desperate, like when he told Mendy not to happen to him because he didn't understand anything, the plan with Padawan Vini, which he spoke about a few days ago in L'Equipe, is beginning to bear fruit: "I didn't I taught soccer.

All I did was make him change his mind.

Before he had an idea to overflow, and then 'we'll see what I do'.

Today he overflows knowing if he will score, center, enter.

He thinks.

It's what I taught him."

The Frenchman finally trusts the Brazilian, and that trust can be traced in Opta's count of passes between them.

This season they give each other the ball almost twice as often as last: 13.2 every 90 minutes, compared to 7.9.

Although there is another figure that reflects even better the increase in confidence.

Until this course he had never given an assist to the Brazilian, and this one already has seven.

The connection has also been shot in the other direction, although Vini had already given him assists on goal: three in 18-19, none in 19-20, two in 20-21 and seven in this one.

The last one, on Wednesday at Stamford Bridge, in a play almost from memory, unthinkable a few months ago, in which a wall between them disarmed Chelsea and ended with a Vini cross headed by Benzema.

It was his goal 35 of him.

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