There are relatively few genuine success stories among football’s most expensive transfers. Philippe Coutinho, Antoine Griezmann and Ousmane Dembele to Barcelona are all in the top 10 transfers, alongside the returns of Romelu Lukaku and Paul Pogba to Chelsea and Manchester United respectively.
But none of those moves can really compare to Eden Hazard’s problems at Real Madrid.
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Hazard’s entire four-season spell in La Liga doesn’t even produce numbers that match his final pre-Madrid season at Chelsea: 2,529 minutes played to 2,926, four goals to 16, seven assists to 15, 90 opponents dribbled past to 137. Hazard has been a shadow of his former self in the Spanish capital. Still the joint-11th most-expensive transfer ever, the Belgium international has now agreed to terminate his deal at Madrid, with a season to go on the five-year contract he signed upon arrival.
Things began badly. Hazard seemingly showed up in Madrid overweight in the summer of 2019, then sustained a thigh injury in pre-season which kept him out for the start of that first La Liga campaign.
He took time to find his feet but, after a difficult couple of months, did begin to show his best form. He was outstanding in a 4-0 victory away at Eibar in the November, and then, after the ensuing international break, returned to Madrid with another outstanding performance in a 3-1 home win over Real Sociedad. Notably, those two games failed to include a Hazard goal or assist, but he was probably man of the match in both.
Hazard in full flight against Eibar in November 2019 (Photo: Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)And then, on November 26, came a fateful contest against Paris Saint-Germain…
This was his time to shine: a home Champions League game under the bright lights at the Bernabeu, up against another of European football’s modern giants. Madrid started the game excellently, with Hazard again the best player. The opener came after a brilliant flowing move, eventually rounded off by Karim Benzema, that started when Hazard dribbled inside off the left, turning away from Marquinhos and beating countryman Thomas Meunier, and then, highly unusually, nutmegging the referee before laying off the ball to the onrushing Federico Valverde on the far side.
This was Hazard having fun, and he was the game’s best player for a third straight Madrid match.
After an hour, though, Hazard tried to turn away from Meunier, who brought him down. This was the challenge from which Hazard’s career would never truly recover — which is something of a surprise when you study it closely.
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Meunier has inevitably received his abuse from Madrid fans online, but sometimes the tackles which have the most severe consequences are entirely innocuous.
This is hardly the classic “career-ending” foul — Meunier simply mistimes his challenge, and his foot doesn’t make contact with Hazard at all. It’s more ankle-to-ankle, and as Hazard tries to pivot and move away, his right ankle is caught beneath that of Meunier. It was the same ankle Hazard broke in training on international duty after the 2016-17 club season, although he made a swift and seemingly full recovery on that occasion.
You’ll probably have seen a more reckless tackle in every game you watched this season, and it was unfortunate that Meunier, Hazard’s Belgium team-mate — who has sometimes struggled on the club stage but consistently plays well at international tournaments — was the guilty party.
“I am honestly sad,” the right-back said afterwards. “I saw two or three of his team-mates, who said that he had taken quite a hit. I cross my fingers that it is not too bad. If there is one player who I really don’t want to injure, it’s Eden.”
It seemed like a fairly minor injury at the time, but Hazard has desperately struggled to get over it in the three-plus years since.
The ankle itself has been a persistent problem, leading to the insertion of a metal plate at one point, and there have been knock-on effects in terms of muscle problems too. Since that injury against PSG, he completed 90 minutes for Madrid just once, never remotely showing his best form when he played.
With the dramatic rise of Vinicius Junior, and to a lesser extent Rodrygo, there has been little opportunity, or reason, for Madrid managers Zinedine Zidane and now Carlo Ancelotti to give him a chance with a consistent run of games. Especially, of course, when Hazard has offered little in his cameo appearances, and when he’s frequently been unavailable.
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Hazard’s reputation as a player blighted by injuries is quite a turnaround from his previous one for barely missing a game. In the decade before his move to Madrid (which incorporates three years with France’s Lille and seven at Chelsea) he played a part in all but 22 of his club’s 380 league matches.
Maybe all that football led to long-term fatigue, and it’s fair to say that Hazard wasn’t the most dedicated in terms of physical conditioning. Team-mates say they never saw him in the gym, and he would barely stay longer at the training ground than was required.
He was the anti-Cristiano Ronaldo. In a way, that is part of his charm, and in the realm of top-class modern footballers, Hazard has always seemed a normal, down-to-earth guy. Away from football, he is a family man rather than someone interested in fame.
It would be a shame if Hazard is remembered mostly for this disastrous period in Madrid, considering his performances for Chelsea that got him the move there. It’s sometimes implied he used to go missing for long periods during games, but that only really happened once: he quite obviously played within himself in 2015-16, the middle year of his Chelsea career, after an opening-day argument with manager Jose Mourinho, who was sacked that December with his defending champions one place about the bottom three.
But Hazard was voted into the PFA Team of the Year in his first year in England, again in his second (when he also won the Young Player of the Year award), and again in his third (when he won the outright Player of the Year award).
After that “Mourinho year”, he returned to top form in 2016-17 and, while losing out to team-mate N’Golo Kante for the PFA Player of the Year award that time around, Chelsea fans who watched the two of them all season disagreed as they voted him the club’s player of the year, ahead of Kante, for the third time, They then did so again in his final year, 2018-19, when Hazard was unfortunate not to be voted the league’s best player again.
So, in seven seasons, Hazard was arguably the Premier League’s best player in three of them, and was excellent in another two. Yes, 2015-16 was a washout, while in 2017-18 he was quieter than usual, but he still delivered a tremendous performance in its FA Cup final, winning and then scoring the penalty for the only goal in a victory over Manchester United.
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In the following year’s League Cup final, he was unquestionably the best player on show, and there was also a brilliant Panenka penalty in the shootout Chelsea eventually lost to Manchester City. He was also man of the match in the 2019 Europa League final win over Arsenal — his final game for Chelsea.
Hazard won, and scored, the decisive penalty in the 2017-18 FA Cup final (Photo: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)Hazard’s Belgium displays were also largely excellent — particularly at World Cup 2018, where they finished third — until his injury problems began. Those days are officially behind him: Hazard retired from international duty earlier this year following a shock group-stage exit at Qatar 2022, after admitting he felt uncomfortable getting opportunities when younger players deserved to start more than he did.
The future is uncertain.
Hazard will surely have offers on the table, albeit presumably from more modest clubs and leagues, and probably in the form of deals that are weighted heavily towards appearance bonuses.
Clearly, we’ll never see the Hazard of Chelsea again. Most would suggest we never saw that player for Madrid. But those three sublime performances up until his injury in November 2019 showed Hazard had settled, that he could do it for them.
That one tackle, innocuous at the time, changed everything.
(Top photo: Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images)
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