Chelsea news: Eden Hazard’s Real Madrid decision is an empty win for the Blues who achieved a feat of footballing trickery but for the worst cost imaginable.
Eden Hazard (Image: Bradley Collyer/PA Wire)
With the poetry, seamless timing and exquisite grace that Eden Hazard showed throughout seven years at Stamford Bridge as a player, it is only fitting that his inevitable announcement of departure from Real Madrid was so perfectly weighted.
Four years to the very week that both Chelsea and Los Blancos revealed to the world what they already knew, the 32-year-old’s time was up in Spain. Just like nobody played any tricks in 2019, the whole show pulled off without a curtain or stage, in full view of the public, his ending was as obvious as the start.
He played more league minutes within 17 days of his final season in England than he did in the entirity of this purgatory year at Santiago Bernabeu. Cutting his deal short should come as no shock, this is a player that has forever engaged and indulged in this game for pure enjoyment.
The happy-go-lucky appearance of a plucky Belgian with all the talent of the world and some to spare appearing on the shores of England in 2012 had people scared from the very start. He was at the centre of a transfer saga, bidding war and Manchester City seduction package before they became popular.
When he, for some reason, chose Chelsea over the pick of Europe’s elite, everyone knew they had missed out. His effortless gliding was apparent immediately and within seven minutes of his debut in Wigan it was potently clear what Chelsea had on their hands. That player is long gone.
He has been bound by shackles, the unavoidable black hole of Real Madrid has eaten him up and the body can no longer do as his mind wants. He used to send players spinning at the thought of jinxing one way or another, let alone combining that with the mocking smile he would glance back with as players were left wondering where had gone.
Madrid didn’t get much of this. There were glimpses. After a slow start, one plagued by injury and a pre-season recovery – he never was one to take this thing too seriously, there’s a time for burgers and chips and another for getting ready for the game – Hazard sprung to life.
Having been arguably the best player on the planet in 2018 there was no surprise that he still had these levels and gears to shift through. Coming off the back of carrying Belgium through the Russian World Cup like a player on FIFA with the stats dialed up, it took him 14 minutes to show that it was business time.
Whether Hazard ever truly realised that Maurizio Sarri was the Chelsea manager upon his return, who really knows. This was his thing and the warning signs were there. 14 minutes it took him in an opening day win over Huddersfield, he was arguably man of the match. The ability to pick up the pace for a game after weeks away, to kiss the ball with his feet and caress it in a way so lovingly jovial that the Terriers realised just how much of a step up the Premier League was.
Hazard was a player before his time. Gary Neville insisted that he needed the numbers, the stats, the goals and assists to compete with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. This ignores everything that made Hazard the player he was. It wasn’t about world domination, he was just the most gifted player of recent Chelsea history.
Hazard didn’t have, or need, the drive to score 50 goals in a season, he just wanted to play, to be alive, to feel the air on the pitch and smell the panic of those taking it more seriously than him. These aren’t attributes that make for success at Madrid.
Soucre: football.london
