There’s trouble in Saudi Arabia, where Al Ittihad’s star summer signing, former Real Madrid hero Karim Benzema, is apparently clashing with his manager, the somewhat less glamorous Nuno Espirito Santo.
Goal report that Nuno has told his club’s board that Benzema “does not fit his tactical style” – which as far as we were aware was pretty dour, defensive football. To be fair, it’s always seemed hard to imagine Benzema’s silky interplay working well in a Nuno team – we just expected the player to be the one complaining rather than the coach.
In this case, we would strongly recommend to Nuno that he just puts up with it. Player power tends to win in football anyway, and in these clubs which are essentially trophy cabinets filled with star players, nobody is going to pick the coach over a true superstar.
There will be some calls for this to lead to a Benzema return to Real Madrid – sadly from their point of view, it seems far more likely that the Frenchman wins this power struggle.
