Speaking exclusively to Football Presse, Worthington reflected on his near-obsession with one of the modern game’s finest strikers. “I kept saying we should sign Karim Benzema when he was 16, 17, 18,” he admitted. “I mentioned it to every club I worked with. At Bolton, the fee was about €1 million — around £750,000. I kept saying, ‘Sign him!’ Sam kept coming back: the chairman says we can’t afford him. But that was Phil Gartside’s mistake, really.”
At the time, Worthington says, the club struggled with wages and finances, leaving young Benzema just out of reach. “It’s a difficult one for a chairman,” he said. “Maybe he couldn’t afford the wages for the next 12 months. But I’ve still got all the reports — I was saying, ‘Sign Benzema’ from the age of 16 onwards.”
The French prodigy, born in 1987 in Lyon, went on to a glittering career instead. After rising through Olympique Lyonnais’ academy, Benzema made his mark in Ligue 1 before moving to Real Madrid in 2009, where he won multiple Champions League titles and became one of Europe’s deadliest forwards. Today, in 2026, he’s plying his trade at Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia, continuing to find the net in a league increasingly attracting global stars.
Worthington could only shake his head at what might have been. “Chelsea had the money to do it, of course, but he went to Madrid. He was a useful player for them. He did all right,” he said with a wry smile. “But imagine if we’d got him at Bolton…”
A reminder, says Worthington, that spotting talent isn’t always enough — sometimes it’s money that writes the history books.