Karim Benzema vs Luis Suarez: Comparing stats from each of their prime seasons | OneFootball

Karim Benzema was recently crowned the best player in world football as he received the 2022 edition of the Ballon d’Or.

It’s a huge honour and a well-deserved one too because Benzema was immense for Real Madrid in the 2021/22 season.

Not only did he guide the club to La Liga and Champions League glory, but he scored and assisted goals by the bucket load doing it – many of which proved vital to Los Blancos.

A Champions League hat-trick vs Paris Saint-Germain was followed up with another against Chelsea, both snatched victories away from the jaws of defeat and ensured his team progressed in the competition.

Whilst an impressive haul of goals towards the end of the La Liga season kept Real on track and stifled the fight back from arch-rivals Barcelona.

If we're keeping it real, nobody even came close to Benzema in the contest for the Ballon d'Or.

Although that hasn't stopped fans battling it out on social media, with many eluding to the idea that Benzema is fortunate to have enjoyed his so called 'peak season' whilst Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo weren't fully at it.

Those fans point to the likes of Luis Suarez and Robert Lewandowski, two strikers that never won football's most coveted individual prize but were arguably considered bigger legends than Benzema prior to last season.

So, with that in mind, we've decided to take a look at Suarez's prime season and compare it to Benzema's, with the end goal of deciding which of the stars performed better.

Suarez's prime season

Right, first things first, we need to actually identify when Suarez peaked.

He won the Golden Shoe twice, once in 2013/14 with Liverpool and once in 2015/16 with Barcelona.

However, his goal return was far superior in his Camp Nou days and so we've opted for that campaign.

For reference, Ronaldo won the Ballon d'Or that year by what was a record 429-point margin, with Messi coming second and Griezmann third.

And you'll see just how quite frankly ridiculous that final finishing order was shortly...

Benzema vs Suarez: prime season league comparison

We've used Squawka's rather brilliant player analysis tool to compare the two strikers.

The tool taps into Opta's stat machine and provides you with information on a player's performance in a specific competition.

Therefore, we've decided to narrow this analysis down to two parts: league performance and Champions League performance.

Taking a look at league performance, there is a very, very clear winner:

Suarez dominates

Ooooh, that doesn't make for good reading if you happen to be an avid Benzema fan.

The Barca icon wins on quite literally every single category, apart from chances created and attempted passes.

It's worth noting that Suarez did play three more matches. But overall, in most areas, Suarez is far superior.

The most shocking stat of all is that Suarez scored nearly double the amount of non-penalty goals (37) compared to Benzema (20).

Although he also betters the Frenchman in total goals, conversion rate, headed goals and assists.

Incredibly, neither player scored any of their 67 combined La Liga goals from outside the penalty area.

A victory for Suarez, then - now will the form translate to the Champions League, too?

But now Benzema has well and truly thrown the cat amongst the pigeons with the Madrid man dominating on the European stage.

As mentioned previously, those two hat-tricks vs PSG and Chelsea will do his stats no harm.

However, what Benzema seems to have proven here is that he was the man for the big moments - and isn't that, after all, one of the key principles in picking a winner of the Ballon d'Or?

Suarez beats Benzema in just one category, assists (3). Whilst the Frenchman owns the rest.

So, who was better?

That's all down to your subjective opinion and what you value you more.

Based purely on the stats, Suarez was the more dominant of the two taking into account the margins he was bettering Benzema's numbers in the league.

He stepped up and led Barca to a domestic double, bettering even Messi when it came to on pitch performance.

Then again, Benzema probably had less world-class support available to him than what Suarez would have done and often had to drag Madrid through big moments single-handedly, certainly in an attacking sense, anyway.

Whatever you feel, both stars were simply magnificent at their peaks and have been throughout the entirety of their careers.