In the French field another alarm goes off and everyone is looking at Benzema, four days after the debut of the ‘Bleus’ at the World Cup

Absent from the field for a month due to a mysterious muscle injury, the health of Karim Benzema continues to worry, last Ballon d’Or, four days before France’s debut at the World Cup, Tuesday against Australia.

Since joining the concentration at Clairefontaine last Monday, Benzema, 34, has notor participated in any training with your teammates: he did only a few exercises outside the group, under the supervision of the ‘Bleus’ physical trainer.

Simple precautionary measure or real damage? Publicly, both his teammates and coaching staff are sending calm messages to the French forward. “He’s calm, has a lot of experience and knows his body. If he hasn’t played it’s because he doesn’t consider himself capable of helping the team as much as possible,” said his Real Madrid team-mate Aurélien Tchouaméni. Thursday, already in Qatar in front of journalists from all over the world.

Since receiving the Ballon d’Or on October 17 in Paris, Benzema only played one full game against Elche two days later.

Real Madrid announced on 22 October that their French striker was suffering from “muscle strain in the quadriceps of his left leg” and has since played only a few minutes against Celtic in Glasgow on 2 November.

Manager Didier Deschamps is hoping to have the forward against Australia on Tuesday, but it remains to be seen how a player who has played just twelve games since August fares. By comparison, he is ten games behind his strike partner Kylian Mbappé.

Benzema could blame this lack of competitive pace. “It’s clear that it’s better when you can chain matches, but Karim is a different case, because he’s less of a problem for a striker than for a midfielder,” player Adrien Rabiot said on Friday. “He’s a top player and knows how to handle himself”He added.

And if he doesn’t arrive for the first match against Australia, “it will be for the second,” Rabiot put into perspective referring to the reigning world champions’ next match against Denmark on 26 November.

Another member of the French squad, Bayern Munich defender Lucas Hernandez, also wanted to play down Benzema’s situation, as well as defender Raphaël Varane, who also has physical problems: “If they don’t arrive in time (to play against ‘Socceroos ‘), we have a fantastic squad, with regular players at the big clubs.”

The world champion is perhaps the team with the most casualties for this World Cup event. Forward Christopher Nkunku suffered a knee injury in training on Tuesday and will not be available for the tournament. But before reaching Arab lands, Lionel Messi’s PSG team-mate Prensnel Kimbembe withdrew from the league after failing to recover from an Achilles tendon injury. So, he joined the list which already included N’Golo Kanté and Paul Pogba, which will not be in Qatar.

With information from AFP