Real Madrid manager Julen Loptegui believes his striker Karim Benzema has the capability to score 30-40 goals and fight for the Pichichi award for Spain’s top scorer in La Liga.
Karim Benzema scored brace against Leganes on Sunday.
After the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo, the responsibilities has grown for Benzema and he has lived up to the expectations so far. The player who scored five goals last seasons in 32 league matches has already scored fours goals in the first 3 games of the season.
However, the new manager denies to take any credit for Benzema’s improvement and keeps firm belief on the striker to score more goals.
After Madrid’s 4-1 victory against Leganes, Loptegui said:
“The merit is his. He is a great player, I haven’t changed anybody. Why shouldn’t he finish with 30 or 40 goals? The most important thing is the team and goals are the work of the whole team. Benzema is a great player and always has been. What he’s doing is credit to him. He’s happy and is helping the team, and it’ll stay like this.”
Meanwhile, Golden Glove winner Thibaut Courtois finally made his debut for Real Madrid on Saturday, leaving the UEFA’s best goalkeeper of the year on bench. Courtois was the biggest signing of the Los Blancos in the summer transfer window.
Loptegui on Courtois:
“We decided that Courtois would play. But we have excellent solutions. Keylor is ours, he played a great game against Girona, he is UEFA’s best goalkeeper. We’ll see. The decision will be made on the field although we have an idea of what we will do. We played well, because of the equaliser there was some confusion and we wanted to do things in a hurry but the second half was great.”
With both goal-keepers in top form, Real Madrid are set to face a good problem ahead. However, before media tries to make any headline, Courtois revealed that Navas had taken the decision well.
“Navas wished me a lot of luck. We get one very well, sometimes they look for issues, but we are both competing. For the team, it is going to go well including Kiko Casilla too. We are three great goalkeepers.”