Benzema drops Real Madrid exit hint

Karim Benzema appears to have dropped a huge hint that he could be leaving Real Madrid, with the Frenchman pictured aboard a private plane as he left the club's pre-season tour.

While the rest of the squad flew to Shanghai for the next stage of their International Champions Cup campaign, where they take on AC Milan, Benzema headed in a direction of his own.

As revealed by Goal in May, Arsenal have long been laying the foundations for an ambitious bid to sign the France international, who played no part in Madrid's most recent friendly, a 3-0 win over Inter, and has been speaking cryptically about his future.

Using Verlan slang, which inverts syllables in a word, Benzema wrote on his Instagram page "#directionturfu", which, rather than being a typying error, translates as 'Next stop: the future'.