VITORIA-GASTEIZ, Spain – Karim Benzema picked up where he left off last season by scoring twice to fire Real Madrid to a 4-1 win away to Alaves in their opening game of the La Liga campaign.
Real had an uninspiring first half in Carlo Ancelotti’s first league game since taking charge of the club for a second time but Benzema settled their nerves by blasting the ball into the net in the 48th minute after being teed up by Eden Hazard.
Defender Nacho Fernandez added to Real’s lead eight minutes later, sliding in to stab a Luka Modric through ball into the net from close range.
Benzema scored a scrappy second goal in the 62nd but moments later Alaves pulled one back when striker Joselu slotted in a penalty after a foul by goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.
Substitute Vinicius Jr added a final goal for the visitors in stoppage time, netting with a diving header as he met a cross from debutant David Alaba, Reuters reported.
French striker Benzema was Real’s standout player last season with 23 league strikes, more than a third of the team’s goal haul, and his form earned him a recall to the France squad for the first time in six years.
Elsewhere, Barcelona coach Ronald Koeman said that he was “excited about the team” and urged them to avoid “living in the past” ahead of the first Liga match of the post-Lionel Messi era on Sunday against Real Sociedad.
The departure of Messi “has been painful for all the fans, for everything Leo has done for this club, for the type of player he is,” Koeman told a press conference according to AFP.
“We will miss him a lot because he was a very important player in the history of Barca. But you can’t live in the past. Things change and I’m very excited about the team we have this year,” Koeman said.
“When we get the injured players back, we will have a very strong team to achieve great things. The team is ready, we have a lot of experience and we are ready to play. The team is ready to go, we’ve had five weeks of preparation when Leo wasn’t even present,” said Koeman who is entering his second season on the Barcelona bench.
Barcelona said they had no choice but to offload Messi as they battle to slash a 1.2 billion euro debt mountain. They also said their wage bill with Messi would have amounted to 110 per cent of income, way over La Liga’s Financial Fair Play limit.
Even without him, club president Joan Laporta says that figure only comes down to a still unsustainable 95 per cent.
Barca said that four of the club’s key players — Jordi Alba, Sergi Roberto, Gerard Pique and Sergio Busquets — had agreed to a salary cut.
“We know perfectly well the economic situation of the club. It needs help, in every sense. So their gesture is to be commended,” Koeman said.
He added that he still hoped to sign players. “We are a bit short on strikers, so we have talked about the possibility of recruiting a striker of a different profile,” said Koeman.
“But it will depend on whether we can sign anyone. It all depends on Financial Fair Play. If it’s possible, it’s likely we’ll add someone up front.”
Former Barca president Josep Maria Bartomeu, whose tenure Laporta slammed last week in revealing the club could not afford to push through a deal to keep Messi, hit back Friday insisting it was the current administration which was to blame for the club’s growing financial woes.
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