Zinedine Zidane said this week that Eden Hazard is ‘upset’ with his body breaking down on him once again. Who can blame him? Since making a £150million move to join Real Madrid from Chelsea, the Belgian has been a disaster plagued by injuries.
If he is not contending with a hamstring injury, it is a muscle strain, a bruised ankle and then there have been the more serious issues – the hairline fracture in his foot was particularly nasty and kept him on the outside looking in for months.
But how has one of the Premier League’s finest ever players wilted so badly in Spain? It’s a question that neither Chelsea or Real Madrid fans seem to have an answer to.
Eden Hazard established himself as one of the best players in the world while at Chelsea
The Belgian has barely been able to stay fit since making a £150million move to Real Madrid
The Spanish press have delivered their own assessments, accusing him of returning from pre-season overweight and lacking professionalism, something Zidane disputed ahead of Real Madrid’s season opener against Real Sociedad.
Zidane said then he was ‘very close’ to a return and yet he has played no part in their opening three LaLiga games, neither from the start or from the bench.
A muscle problem sustained in training ruled him out of the most recent win over Real Valladolid and as photographers captured him watching from the stands, he looked like a man wondering where it had all gone so, so wrong.
‘He’s not happy, he knows that it’s not a big thing and we have to take it easy with him,’ Zidane said afterwards. ‘It’s a question of little time, I’m sure.’
Since joining Real Madrid ahead of the 2019-20 season, Hazard has managed just 22 games from a possible 51.
Of those 51 he has played in 22 games, missed 27 through injury, missed a trip to Mallorca for the birth of his fourth child and was rested, along with many other first team stars, for the final game of the season away to Leganes with the title already secured.
And so he has missed 53 per cent of matches through injury in the Spanish capital. For a player with such a large price tag and an immense amount of talent, it’s been nothing short of a disaster.
He has missed as many games through injury with Real as he did in seven years at Chelsea
The 27 games he has missed to date equals the same number he was absent for at Chelsea across seven seasons at Stamford Bridge.
In his opening season when arriving from Lille, Hazard hit the ground running and played 62 games, missing six, three of those due to injury.
A calf strain kept him out of a league game against Manchester United in May 2013 while a hamstring complaint ensured he played no part in the final game against Everton and the subsequent Europa League final against Benfica.
The following year he missed five games through injury, four of which were down to a calf strain which took longer than anticipated to ease up.
In two seasons he had missed eight games for Chelsea through injury. Having come from France, any doubts over whether he was battle-hardened for English football evaporated.
It was 2014-15 where Hazard felt like Superman, not missing a single match through injury. He was rested twice – an FA Cup third round tie against Watford and a dead rubber in the Champions League against Sporting Lisbon.
After a season of such magnificence it was 2015-16 which saw Hazard miss the most amount of games in a single season during his entire time with Chelsea, sitting out for nine matches.
Hazard has appeared frail since moving to Spain and it has reportedly left him feeling ‘upset’
There have been question marks over his weight but he has been working hard in the gym (left)
A nasty hip injury sustained away at Leicester in Jose Mourinho’s last game in charge kept him out for six matches while a groin strain kept him out for three games. The hip issue became a growing concern given how explosive his game is.
Hazard would go on to miss 10 games across the next three seasons to reinforce his durability and having established himself as arguably the best player in the league when at his best, it was no surprise to see Real Madrid fluttering their eyelashes in his direction.
When he announced on TV following the Europa League final win that he would be leaving the club he was to depart having played 353 of a possible 394 games in seven seasons for Chelsea.
Of those missed 41 games there were 27 cited for injury and he walked out the door having sat out a remarkable 6.9 per cent of games with an injury since 2012-13.
But in Spain there has been nothing close to that level of durability, nothing close to the kind of impact that was expected when he arrived as the latest Galactico at a club willing to spend big on attacking stars.
A hairline foot fracture was a nasty first season injury in Madrid which had him out for months
No. In fact his impact has been an increased workload on the club physios given his frequency on the sidelines.
A hamstring issue kept him out of the opening three LaLiga games of the 2019-20 season against Celta Vigo, Real Valladolid and Villarreal, pushing back his debut.
He did manage to take to the pitch but was slow in his adaptation to Spanish football, much to the ire of supporters who believed he would galvanise the attack still feeling the impact of losing Cristiano Ronaldo.
A bruised ankle stopped him being involved against Alaves heading into winter 2019 and then things got much more serious. Further scans showed the injury against Paris Saint-Germain was more severe than initially thought. A hairline fracture in the foot was the diagnosis and he missed 15 games.
His rotten luck was not finished yet. Forced off against Levante on February 22, 2020, Hazard was told the news that he had suffered a distal fibula fracture. Were it not the shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic, it was unlikely he would have featured again last season.
Zinedine Zidane (left) said recently that he doesn’t know when he can call on Hazard again
Hazard was forced to watch from the stands for their recent LaLiga win over Real Valladolid
In the end the pandemic came as a blessing in allowing him to recover without added media scrutiny week to week. A knock was cited as the reason Zidane left him out of games against Getafe and Athletic Bilbao in the run-in but the hope was that 2020-21 was Hazard’s real target to explode into life, justify the mammoth fee the club paid.
And yet we get to the present, three games into the campaign and Hazard is yet to play a single minute. Zidane even admitted he has no idea when he will be able to call on the Belgian.
For someone who once looked like Superman in the Premier League where he was given a rough ride by defenders, he is a shadow of what fans came to love in west London. Failure to get a grip on his struggles and he’ll be seen as one of Los Blancos’ all-time biggest flops.
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