“I was personally bruised”: Benzema affair, Deschamps’ confessions

Didier Deschamps returned to Euro 2016 and the consequences of the Benzema affair, following the statements of the former French international.

The years go by but at each new Euro, Didier Deschamps is questioned about the episode that marked the 2016 edition. At the time, the French coach had chosen to do without the services of Karim Benzema, who was then under investigation in the Mathieu Valbuena sex tape affair. The former Real Madrid striker had accused the coach of having given in to “a racist part of France”. Two days after this statement, the house owned by Didier Deschamps and his wife near Concarneau was vandalized with the words “racist” spray-painted on it. A sequence that left a lasting impression on the strong man of Les Bleus.

In an interview given just before Euro 2024 and published this Sunday by The TeamDidier Deschamps returned to this very complicated period to manage for him, between a Euro 2016 to prepare for and his extra-sporting worries to resolve. On a personal level, just before, there had been things that I didn’t really want to talk about. Did that count? It’s dated, above all. From that moment on, everything changed. Not just professionally. But in short, for me, the white line has been crossed. »

“Unfortunately, there were consequences.”

And the winner of the 2018 World Cup on the French bench continued: ” I don’t want to go into the consequences, but there were some, unfortunately. But like everything that happened to me, I tried to take the little positive. (…) Before, I lost energy for certain subjects and I had less for others. But since that moment, I have been in total immersion. It didn’t spoil anything, because the adventure was great, but I was personally bruised and it wasn’t just me. » Despite this, Didier Deschamps will take his Blues to the final of the Euro then organized in France, with terrible disillusionment in the form of a cruel defeat against Portugal (0-1, ap).

As for the Deschamps-Benzema relationship, it resumed shortly before Euro 2021, the time chosen by the coach to reconnect with the man who now plays in Saudi Arabia. And then a new break, a priori definitive, came at the dawn of the 2022 World Cup, when the French striker, judged too diminished by a physical problem, was sent home a few days before the entry into the running of the Blues. Another scar.