Benzema’s fitness struggle ahead of France’s World Cup campaign

The days go by and Karim Benzema shows few signs of being fully recovered from his hamstring injury. L’Équipe have reported that, the Real Madrid striker, along with Raphaël Varane, trained alone once again on Friday despite having taken part in the first 15 minutes of the session along with the rest of his teammates. It was a repeat of what had happened on Thursday as the France roster trained together for the first time after arriving in Doha. Benzema did some light work with the ball and then went off with Varane to follow a tailored training plan with the French physio.

As for Varane, there have been clear signs of improvement. According to L’Équipe, Varane was feeling much better after his solo training session on Friday, which means there’s a good chance he’ll be back training with the rest of the group on Saturday. There’s less optimism as far as Benzema is concerned, to the point that no one in the party is prepared to confirm that the world champions will be able to start the defence of their trophy with a full-strength line-up against Australia on Tuesday.

Benzema has been struggling with a hamstring injury suffered while playing for Real Madrid for more than a month. While those closest to him and the player himself have insisted that the injury isn’t a serious one, the reality is that he has shown few signs of improvement in that time. On Saturday, France will train at 1pm ET time and everything points to the current Ballon d’Or winner being absent once again.