Benzema misses Qatar due to injury: when the World Cup was played without the Ballon d’Or

Red alert, sirens blaring. Karim Benzema waved the white flag during his last training session with France. For him it is the bitterest stop: the Real Madrid striker’s injury cost “The Dream” not only the first match of the World Cup (Tuesday at 8 pm, against Australia), but the entire competition. The player had come out of his training session with Les Bleus in pain yesterday due to a tear in his quadriceps. And the day of the national team passed hectic: we wondered about what to do until the inevitable verdict of the exam. So here we are with the hypothesis that becomes reality: an edition of the World Cup played without the current Ballon d’Or winner. Atypical situation, but not unique in history. There are in fact two precedents.

AHI, DON ALFREDO

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In 1957 the strongest player on the face of the earth was playing for Real Madrid, exactly as it is today. Alfredo Di Stefano gave himself a season as an alien: 43 appearances, 43 goals. He won, by scoring, the Champions Cup in the final against Fiorentina, as well as the championship. He was one of the most awaited protagonists for the World Cup in Sweden scheduled for the summer of 1958, but did not qualify. With which national team, you will say? He had made some appearances for Argentina in the 1947 Copa America, but in the following years he had managed to complete the process for Spanish citizenship. And his team was unable to detach the pass for Sweden: Di Stefano scored two goals in the round success against Switzerland, one of the crucial games, but they weren’t enough. The first World Cup was played in Sweden without the Ballon d’Or: the world began to set its sights on a young Pelé (who, however, due to non-European nationality issues, would never win the coveted recognition). Incidentally, Alfredo Di Stefano ended his career without ever having played in a World Cup. What a regret.

NO SIMONSEN

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Exactly twenty years later, same scenario. However, the protagonist bears a decidedly less bombastic name. The great Borussia Moenchengladbach of the mid-1970s was driven by Allan Simonsen’s goals: they stopped in the European Cup final against Liverpool. But the Danish center forward stole the eye to the point of deserving the Ballon d’Or at the end of the year: he won the German championship with 12 goals and celebrated the ambitious prize. Simonsen definitively closed the Franz Beckenbauer era: the Kaiser had won the previous year. However, the ‘Gladbach bomber experienced a bitter disappointment with his national team: no qualification for the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, with the red and whites of Copenhagen ousted in the qualifying round by Poland. After Di Stefano and before Benzema, the Ballon d’Or skipped the World Cup.