Hazard, an unsolvable mystery also for Ancelotti

Eden Hazard’s career at Real Madrid is like a great ‘déjà vu’. Illusion, return to the playing fields, feeling that the player does not finish showing all his talent, untimely injury, recovery and starting again … This succession of events has been repeated cyclically throughout his first two seasons of white. Now, at the beginning of the third year at Chamartín, the Belgian seemed to have taken one more step hand in hand with Carlo Ancelotti, but that optimistic perception is hopelessly diluted as the weeks go by.

The ‘7’ madridista returned early from the concentration with the Belgian team on the occasion of the final four of the Nations League due to a muscular overload. The images with the player standing after starting a career in a counterattack and the subsequent change invited concern in Madrid. Once again it looked ugly after the declarations of the Belgian coach, Roberto Martínez, after the game. For now it does not seem serious, beyond a few days of inactivity and the possibility of losing the Champions League duel against Shakhtar Donetsk in Kiev, but the history of the La Louvière footballer fuels suspicion with the Camp Nou classic of the next Sunday 24 on the horizon.

This is Hazard’s first physical setback in this 2021-22 campaign, which started on the right foot. He started in the Whites’ visits to Alavés and Levante, with a goal pass included in Mendizorroza, but in the Ciutat de València the irruption of Vinicius – precisely replacing the Belgian in the last half hour -, with a double from the Brazilian, began to twist things personally. He only played a few minutes against Betis at Villamarín and watched from the bench the entire duel against Inter Milan at Giuseppe Meazza, the first major commitment of the season, in which Rodrygo also accumulated merits in the battle for a place in the eleven.

Bale’s injury cleared the way for Hazard, who was part of the starting lineup at the premiere at the renovated Bernabéu against Celta and at Mestalla, but again that feeling of not exploding, overshadowed by the exhibitions of Benzema and Vinicius . Since then, he only started the debacle against the Sheriff on the shores of La Castellana. Bad night to show chevrons. Luck seems to be elusive again, so much so that his goal against Espanyol, in the few minutes he played, was invalidated by Benzema’s previous offside.

That great unsolvable mystery for Zidane, Hazard’s football idol when he was a child, is also beginning to be so for Ancelotti. The Italian moved the pieces masterfully at the start of the season, but the puzzle seems to have unraveled in recent weeks. “Hazard has improved his conditions and we have to be careful because he has had injuries in the past and giving him two games in a row can be a bit more difficult. He is not at the level we all want but he works and has all our confidence that he will return to his best condition, “explained the transalpine coach in mid-September about the Belgian’s situation.

Exit rumors

The truth is that at that time the physical problems that he now suffers had not yet manifested themselves, which increases even more the uncertainty about the physical condition of a player who seems more and more doomed to leave Madrid through the back door . Despite the fact that his contract ends in 2024, since he signed for five seasons, there is beginning to be talk of a possible return to the Premier, although it does not seem likely that he will find a place in a very reinforced Chelsea compared to the team that he was when he left and that is the current European champion. There is even speculation about his inclusion in some flashy operation like the one that would involve the signing of Haaland.

In total, 51 games played as a Madrid player, the vast majority of them incomplete. They do not even reach half of the 119 official matches that the Whites have played with Hazard on their squad. Five goals and nine assists, a very poor background for that galactic signing that was closed in the summer of 2019 in exchange for a little more than one hundred million euros – up to 160 according to information from some Belgian media – and that promised the arrival of a leader on the grass, a star that inherited Cristiano Ronaldo’s ‘7’. For now an unsolvable mystery for Zidane and now also for Ancelotti no matter how much Roberto Martínez, the Belgian coach, regrets that Hazard’s situation in Spain is very atypical and insists that in order to catch up he has to play more games.