Real Madrid's Karim Benzema Still Can't Quite Shake Jose Mourinho's Barb

Jose Mourinho is not alone in holding mistrust for the needlessly flamboyant, but few would seize the chance to banish those who practice it quite like him. So obsessed with function and so pragmatic you can picture him putting a continental breakfast through a blender because it's quicker that way, the Manchester United manager has always butted heads with the insouciant. Karim Benzema was one of them. 

Mourinho and the French striker might have eventually approached the same wavelength toward the end of their time together at Real Madrid, but the Portuguese's famous barb from December 2010 still lingers, still posing its own question. 

At the time, Gonzalo Higuain was injured and Mourinho wanted another striker. Madrid refused; Benzema is what he had. "If I can't hunt with a dog, I will hunt with a cat," Mourinho said, according to Marca (via the Guardian), only a noun away from getting vulgar. "With a dog, you hunt more and you hunt better. But if you have not got a dog and you have got a cat, you hunt with a cat."

If Mourinho for the most part now views Benzema differently, Saturday might have reminded him that streak is still there. Watching the Real Madrid No. 9 fresh-air what should have been a sitter from six yards while attempting a jumping backheel was a bit like watching Rory McIlroy if he tried to close out the Masters by taking the final putt pool-cue style. 

Only minutes after sending a free header from the same spot straight down into the turf and bouncing it over the Malaga net, stroking it home with the right end of the putter would have been the wiser move. Lucas Vazquez, who delivered both balls, would agree.

Benzema flashed a smile, but it wasn't a content one. It was one of those awkward, wincing, embarrassed smiles you make when you realise your joke in the tea room has just offended half of the office. The office, in this case, was the Santiago Bernabeu, and it wasn't pleased. 

The theatrical in football is usually only tolerated from those who've earned the position that makes it inconsequential. Or if it comes off. This didn't, and it came from a player seeking redemption after his error at Sevilla led to a first loss in 41 games. It came at 0-0 in an edgy affair, one following a second straight defeat that has changed the mood just fractionally in Chamartin.  

Benzema heard a smattering of whistles for his efforts. He got a few more of them later on when substituted for Alvaro Morata. A handful might have even been tempted to shout "gato."

Now almost eight years on from his debut in the Spanish capital, it's still hard to pinpoint just where Benzema sits or what he is historically speaking. A record of 173 goals from 342 games is the sort of a Real Madrid great, and on the club's goalscoring charts, he's just gone past Emilio Butragueno and has Paco Gento in his sights. His goals-to-games ratio is superior to both of them, and ditto in comparison with Carlos Santillana and Raul. 

If you were to draw up a centre-forward based upon a list of attributes, Benzema is pretty close to what you'd get. He's tall and powerful. He can shoot it, head it and hold it up. His touch is immaculate, he's faster than you think and he's remarkably unselfish. He scores and creates. 

"Karim is the best player in the world in his position and not just as a goalscorer," former Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti said in 2015, per the Mirror. "Talking about whether he should score 30 goals is a false debate. He has great qualities; he is a complete player."

Talk of Benzema often centres on how his game facilitates those around him, but he's far more than just Cristiano Ronaldo's butler. A nightmare to play at his best, the Frenchman's effortless power still often gives him the look of that kid in the schoolyard who appears three years older than everyone else and has some suspicious upper-lip foliage.

His size allows him to hold you off and brush you aside. The blows then come with a sophistication, with a grace or smoothness of someone much smaller. He's become the footballing equivalent of the Bentley that sits in his garage. 

In December, in the final round of matches in the Champions League group stage, Benzema became only the sixth man to hit 50 goals in Europe's elite club competition. With two neat finishes, he went past Alfredo Di Stefano, Andriy Shevchenko and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He's now level with Thierry Henry. Only Ruud van Nistelrooy, Raul, Lionel Messi and Ronaldo have more.  

For a man with such a record and with such an affinity with grand European nights, it's odd that his place in Real Madrid history remains hard to settle on. 

Mourinho's gripe with the Frenchman was that he didn't seem to care enough. The Portuguese wants men who run through castle walls, but in Benzema, he saw someone with a teenage-boy exterior: disinterested, casual, his focus elsewhere. 

According to Marca (h/t Sky Sports), Mourinho tore into the striker in front of his team-mates one morning at training. "If it was just for you I would make training at midday because you arrive at 10 o'clock half asleep and then by 11 you are already sleeping again."

That was in 2010. Two years later, Benzema was different. A season of sustained excellence in 2011-12 brought 32 goals in all competitions to help propel Madrid to their only league title in eight seasons. In an interview with La Gazetta dello Sport (h/t AS), the forward said: "Mourinho called me a cat to motivate me to improve, and to make me more aggressive, to let out the anger I had inside of me." Benzema, it seems, really is Tyler Durden. 

One senses, though, that the 29-year-old doesn't always find it so straightforward to free himself of the Edward Norton version and throw on the red leather jacket.

After a standout season in 2015-16—his second most prolific after 2011-12—Benzema has regressed this term rather than kicking on. At the halfway point of La Liga, he has just the five goals to his name. At his current pace, he's on track for his lowest tally since his troublesome debut campaign at the Bernabeu. 

But it's not just about goals. The man who for several seasons now has made Madrid function, operating as a fulcrum for the rest of his team to play around, has ceased being that guy. He's less involved than ever; that would make sense if the team was becoming more Ronaldo-centric, but it's not. It's becoming less so, and yet Benzema's playmaking, linking with the midfield and creating of space for others has faded. 

In several key statistical markers (minutes per goal, minutes per assist, shots per game, key passes per game and total passes) he's either at or close to Real Madrid career lows:

	11-12	12-13	13-14	14-15	15-16	16-17
Minutes per Goal	107.5	162.8	163.5	154.1	83.1	180.4
Minutes per Assist	322.6	162.8	308.8	231.2	284.9	451.0
Shots per game	2.9	2.1	2.9	2.4	3.6	2.4
Key Passes per game	1.2	1.4	1.8	1.6	1.6	1.0
Avg Passes	26.7	23.5	23.4	27.3	24.8	20.1

In a piece titled "Real Madrid striker needs to buck up," AS' Antonio Romero cited a "passive attitude that's becoming rather too regular a thing" as the reason for the Bernabeu's angst on Saturday. "Fans are growing tired of watching the fulcrum of their attack so frequently offer such a sensation of zero passion."

It should be noted that anyone playing alongside the cartoon hero that is Sergio Ramos will always look subdued in comparison. You can picture the Real Madrid captain kissing the club badge and not a loved one as the last thing he does before going to sleep each night. 

But it's also that quality that means something at Madrid. The club sees itself as defined by a never-beaten mentality, an institution populated by warriors and kings of the dramatic. It's about sweat more than it is sweet. 

In such a place, Benzema is a paradoxical fit. He's serene on the pitch but not so off it; he's physically imposing but physically fragile at the same time; in many ways, he has everything, and yet there's something still missing—a relentlessness, an unbreakable drive, a singular focus.

Six years on amid a stuttering season, Mourinho's barb still poses its own question. Benzema's record largely answers it.

Recapturing his best and propelling Real Madrid to another league title would do so definitively.