Ok, I'm not writing to say you're wrong, and obviously stupid people exist who are willing to slander anybody, but I gotta ask when Benzema could've ever borne that label, at least in CL competition.
| Season (UCL wins in bold) | Goals | Appearances | G/A |
| 2004-'05 (17) (Lyon) | 0 | 0 | -- |
| 2005-'06 (18) | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2006-'07 (19) | 2 | 3 | 0.66 |
| 2007-'08 (20) | 4 | 7 | 0.57 |
| 2008-'09 (21) | 5 | 8 | 0.63 |
| 2009-'10 (22) (Real Madrid) | 1 | 5 | 0.20 |
| 2010-'11 (23) | 6 | 8 | 0.75 |
| 2011-'12 (24) | 7 | 11 | 0.64 |
| 2012-'13 (25) | 5 | 10 | 0.50 |
| 2013-'14 (26) | 5 | 11 | 0.45 |
| 2014-'15 (27) | 6 | 9 | 0.67 |
| 2015-'16 (28) | 4 | 9 | 0.44 |
| 2016-'17 (29) | 5 | 13 | 0.38 |
| 2017-'18 (30) | 5 | 9 | 0.56 |
| 2018-'19 (31) | 4 | 8 | 0.50 |
| 2019-'20 (32) | 5 | 8 | 0.63 |
| 2020-'21 (33) | 6 | 10 | 0.60 |
| 2021-'22 (34) | 15 | 12 | 1.25 |
| 2022-'23 (35) | 4 | 10 | 0.40 |
| Total | 90 (51 before age 30 season) | 152 (95 before age 30 season) | 0.59 (0.54) |
He was the clear-cut first choice striker for Madrid beginning in the '13-'14 campaign, before that he had been 1a/1b with Higuaín, which might skew the G/A stats in those years because of sub appearances vs. starting appearances (I didn't care to do a G/90 on this). I've included his Lyon stats, obviously his European profile sky-rocketed once at Real Madrid, but how many underwhelming CL campaigns do we see here when viewed purely through a goals scored lens? That first season, 2009-'10, and probably that 2016-'17 season when he was generally underwhelming. I'm not sure how many goals we're expecting to see him score here, remember obviously that Cristiano came the same summer he did to Madrid and didn't leave until following the 2017-'18 season, and if we split the stats only from the 2018-'19 season until Benzema's last season in Madrid, he scored 34 goals in 48 games (0.71 per) including that all-timer of a Champions League campaign in 2021-'22 where he scored more than half (15) of Madrid's goals (28) during their European championship. I realize that might be part of what you mean when you talk about "Benzema really shed that label in his 30's", I might argue that he might've always been capable of that but he was more of a facilitator when he had Ronaldo alongside him and sacrificed his goal scoring capabilities to enhance his teammate who was even better. Benzema and Ronaldo's play styles meshed tremendously well, that's no small part of the reason why Benzema stayed while Higuaín left.
Well, that's more than I intended to write. Don't interpret this as me arguing with anything you said; again, you were suggesting this was the view of others, I'm just pointing out that those others are complete idiots.
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