Eden Hazard can seem a bit of a tease. The footballer certainly is, a mix of shimmies and dummies, improbably strong for his small dimensions, and at his best, delightfully uncontainable.
The man? He has spent quite a lot of his career making others second-guess his next step. That is simply the business he is in, as an exceptional talent, always in demand, weighing up his options.
Hazard lately has been almost as candid as he can be, as one of the parties in a negotiation where two clubs are also involved and a possible nine-figure transfer - €100 million (Dh410m) or more - is at stake, about his desire to make Wednesday night’s Europa League final against Arsenal in Baku his last competitive match for Chelsea.
A long courtship with Real Madrid looks as ardent as it ever has been, his desire to conquer the biggest prize in club football, the Uefa Champions League, is unfulfilled and with one year left on his current contract, he appears to have picked Spain as his next home.
The European Cup target is important. Hazard expected he might have come nearer to it when he signed for the London club. Seven years ago he put out a message on social media to declare: “I am signing for the Champions League winners.”
The prior months had been a long will-he-or-won’t-he tease as a clutch of heavyweights, including Manchester City and United chased the Belgian prodigy who, at Lille, had been named Ligue 1’s Player of the Year twice before he turned 22.
Chelsea paid around €40m, and Hazard, now 28, very quickly discovered he had joined a club with an oblique view of the benefits of internal stability, an English football culture that celebrated the robust tackle to the point of brutality and that, while his employers were indeed champions of Europe for the first time in their history when they welcomed him, that was not a status they would be maintaining with great care.
His early days in Blue often finished with his calves and ankles black and blue. Hazard’s opening 10 minutes in the Premier League were a foretaste: they featured the first of his 91 assists for Chelsea, a superb through-ball executed after he swivelled away from an attempted manhandling; then a Chelsea penalty awarded after Wigan’s Ivan Ramis brought him down; then a horrible scythe into the back of his legs from Wigan captain Gary Caldwell.
‘When you play a final, it does not matter whether it is the Champions League, Europa League or League Cup, you just want to win, you just want to bring the trophy back home and you want to celebrate that.'
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) May 28, 2019
Well said, @HazardEden10! 💪🏆#UELfinal
The fouls never ceased. The count of infringements against him has reached 638 in the Premier League alone over his seven seasons. Hazard now bears all that remarkably well, and has visibly matured into a model senior professional, taking the many knocks with stoicism and, most of the time, an air of unspoilt calm.
Back at beginning, he learned many lessons fast. Hazard’s first European outing for Chelsea would be a chastening 4-1 loss to Atletico Madrid.
By his first London December, the title-holders had made the wrong sort of history by being eliminated in the group phase of the Champions League and although they went on to win the Europa League at the tail of that up-and-down campaign, Hazard missed the final against Benfica with injury.
_____________________________
Chelsea fans in Baku welcome team for Europa League final
On Wednesday night, in Baku, he has the opportunity to make partial amends, and close off a chapter with a pleasing symmetry.
“My first trophy at Chelsea was the Europa League,” he said, teasing at the idea of an imminent farewell, “and it would be a nice last trophy."
His other main trophies are the pair of Premier League titles he galvanised Chelsea towards, in 2015 and in 2017, under the third and the fifth different managers he has served at this most trigger-happy club.
He did not always see eye to eye with Jose Mourinho or Antonio Conte, but he was not alone for that in a Chelsea squad which has always had noisier voices in the dressing-room than his, though seldom contained a more brilliant match-winner or entertainer.
He will look back on his his time on London and reflect that the almost 30 matches he was asked to play at centre-forward, and not in his preferred role, out wide or just behind a main striker, were about 30 too many.
But under Conte and the current manager Maurizio Sarri, Hazard was often considered the best option to spearhead the attack, with his adhesive close control, his accuracy as a finisher and the hardiness he developed against the relentless fouls.
On Wednesday night, Sarri should spare him the task of leading the line, give him a target forward, Olivier Giroud or Gonzalo Higuain to play off, and so invite Hazard to pick up possession in advanced midfield and run at opponents.
If he is at his best, that prospect will alarm Arsenal. If it is to be a vintage Hazard night, Baku will be bewitched by it.
