Benzema accuses Valbuena of 'inventing' stories over sex-tape scandal
Karim Benzema has accused Mathieu Valbuena of "inventing" stories amid an ongoing sex-tape scandal.
Real Madrid striker Benzema has been outcast by the France national team since being charged by police in connection with an alleged blackmail attempt targeting his Les Bleus team-mate Valbuena, a case which is yet to go to trial.
Benzema was excluded from France's Euro 2016 squad as a result and he has claimed that Valbuena has dragged his name "through the mud".
"There's really something wrong with him. It's all part of his story," Benzema told L'Equipe. "When I hear him say that he's ready to play with me again. To hear him at the beginning, I'm scum, I threatened him, I scared him, all you can invent…And now he wants to play with me!
"He said he would not have lodged a complaint if he knew I was involved in the story. For more than a year and a half I'm his worst enemy, a bad guy, a thug, I have to be punished, dragged through the mud, my name and that of my family, in the dirt."
Benzema continued: "It has been almost two years since I was forbidden to see my best friend [Karim Zenati], if not we go to prison, and he is quiet, but he must stop his crap, and I do not know why he keeps talking about me already.
"I am his enemy, I wanted to take money from him, he really has to stop inventing, it makes me mad to keep on lying. Sex tape, he just had to tell the truth about what really happened, and he would not have had all of this."