Benzema reveals his ‘dream’ to win the Ballon d’Or after Lionel Messi praised for forward

Real Madrid forward Karim Benzema has admitted that it has always been his “dream” to win the Ballon d’Or after Lionel Messi suggested that he was a leading candidate to win the award.

The Frenchman has been with Real Madrid since 2009. He has scored 289 goals from his 569 appearances across all competitions.

The 33-year-old enjoyed one of his best seasons on a personal level last season as he scored 30 goals from his 46 outings.

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The striker has also started this season well as he has scored ten times from his ten appearances for Real Madrid.

The nominees for this year’s Ballon d’Or award were announced earlier this week. Messi is currently the favourite to win his seventh Ballon d’Or and Benzema is among the nominated players.

As reported by The Mirror, Benzema said that is he “going to do everything possible” to win the award:

“Since I was little, I have had the dream of winning the Ballon d’Or, which is the dream that all footballers have,” Benzema said.

“It is true that the most important thing is always the team. But when you help your team to win, when you are involved in important plays and score a lot of goals. The next thing is to win the Ballon d’Or, which is in my thoughts.

“Of course, I am going to do everything possible. I am going to work as hard as possible to have that great trophy. To hopefully win it one day and fulfil that dream that I have had since I was a child.”

This comes after Messi suggested that Benzema is a leading contender to win this year’s award.

“Obviously, I have two players in my team that I would vote for, Ney and Kylian,

“Afterwards, there are players at the individual level who have had a great season, like Lewandowski, Benzema.

“But it’s hard to say because what you have done at the collective level means a lot to win the Golden Ball. Lately, the titles have a lot of weight, if you won the Champions League, the Euro, the Copa America.

“I think in previous years, we looked more for the player of the year, the best player. But now the titles also have a lot of weight.”