There has always been a sort of unease between France and its great expatriate footballers. Often attackers from elsewhere, adored in Germany, England and Spain where they will have scored much more than in France. These are stories of disenchantment with a people, an audience, a native land that has become inhospitable for these men divorced from the nation. There is Karim Benzema of course, but let’s not forget Franck Ribéry, Eric Cantona, Thierry Henry, and undoubtedly soon Kylian Mbappé.

At a press conference on Monday, Thierry Henry said it all: “Perhaps from time to time we are not chauvinistic enough. Abroad, we are envied. When the English have good players, we know it. In Italy too. Let’s be French, let’s be chauvinistic.” Calling Karim Benzema with the French Olympic team is a unique opportunity for reconciliation between the former Lyonnais and the French. He wanted it and expressed it, like a last outstretched hand, the call for help from an injured animal. Neither Thierry Henry the coach, nor Philippe Diallo the president of the FFF are against. If there may have been some friction on the line between Didier Deschamps and the player, it has nothing to do with the French Olympic team. The two coaches themselves insist sufficiently on the separation between the Blues and the Bleuets.

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Sportingly, nine months on one leg in the desert will not have dulled the immense talent of the 2022 Ballon d’Or. Benzema is a silky, altruistic and clinical footballer, with talent recognized by the greatest coaches in the world. The open conflict with the management of Al-Ittihad has only one origin: the former Real Madrid striker is dismayed by the level of the Saudi league and his team. He is hungry for the game and looks forward to the Olympic Games alongside the best prospects in French football, with whom he enjoys very good popularity. “That would be amazing. He’s a legend,” Lensois Andy Diouf told me on Wednesday at Clairefontaine. Same story with striker Elye Wahi, who, with stars in his eyes, speaks of Benzema as “a reference to the position” and is eager to “take a couple of little tips from him”. If Thierry Henry wishes, as he says, to field the best possible team, it must contain Karim Benzema.

Karim Benzema in the jersey of the French team at the Olympic Games, partly to soothe his tormented history with the blue jersey and try to close a wound that he himself took responsibility for reopening when closing the door to selection? What a fantastic idea, and I cannot advise Thierry Henry enough to call on Mathieu Valbuena at the same time. Even if it means closing wounds, you might as well do it in the form of a package. And then to complete the trio, let’s also take Franck Ribéry or Patrice Evra, with Games placed no longer under the sign of winning, but of redemption.

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More seriously, nothing justifies calling on him on a sporting level as the former Madrilenian is, at 36 years old, nothing more than the shadow of the brilliant Ballon d’Or that he was in 2022. Wandering like a visibly in trouble in Saudi Arabia, within an Al Ittihad club for which he only scored 9 goals in a championship hardly known for the tightness of its rearguards, Karim Benzema made the choice , legitimate, to favor a big check to finish his career. No one can blame him. But in doing so, he drew a line under his glorious past. Today, many players over 23 in France offer more guarantees in terms of performance than the part-time center forward of Al Ittihad.

Not to mention the striker’s history with the French team in general, and with Didier Deschamps in particular who does not plead in his favor, especially in an Olympic setting at the head of a selection of young people within of which he would have a guiding role. A role that he assumed perfectly with Real Madrid, but which he never knew how to take on in the French team where he created more problems than he solved them. And then this role of model, the Olympic coach himself, Thierry Henry, is enough to keep him busy. To shine at the Games, the French team needs high-performance players. And motivated. That Benzema says he wants to participate is one thing. But whether he really wants it is another…