Why Chelsea and Belgium’s tug of war could damage Eden Hazard’s development

Eden Hazard

Eden Hazard’s Chelsea campaign fizzled out with none of the intensity the Belgian’s electric performances had for so long promised; partly through injury, partly an outcome of the perceptible, yet quietened, frustration with which Jose Mourinho bristled while scrutinising Hazard’s commitment to team play.

Understandable as his reaction was, Hazard was, in the Portuguese’s eyes, at fault for Atletico Madrid’s equaliser and had denied Mourinho a crack against his former club in the Champions League final, his decision to inflate the incident and pull the forward up for shunning the collective more generally seemed strange.

Hazard had been caught snoozing at the far post as Juanfran sauntered in behind and teed up Adrian to level but the most prominent narrative most would fit to Chelsea’s relatively disappointing domestic league campaign had been their failure to break down the type of team they really outght to.

Chelsea’s most creative during the Premier League campaign, 2013/14.

A lack of creativity when was it was needed lost Mourinho the league. Not lapses in defence. In this sense, when you consider how significant the gap between their top creator and the second, Chelsea were to some degree dependent on Hazard, albeit as much as any team would conceivably be dependent on a player who created more chances than any other player in the division.

Eden Hazard produced more goalscoring opportunities than any other player in the division.

As was the case most strongly during the Premier League campaign’s mid-point, currently, Hazard is very much the darling of Belgium international side coach. Marc Wilmots even went so far as to compare the 23-year-olf to one of World Cup football’s most prominent symbols of the magnificent and the mercurial.

“I’ve once played a charity game with Zinedine Zidane. It was crazy. The ball was a part of him: nothing was impossible,” Sky Sports quoted Wilmots as having said a couple weeks ago.

“I’ve the same feeling when I see Eden playing. He’s so valuable.”

And Hazard’s value was most recently demonstrated several days ago during a friendly against Sweden. During the 78th minute, Hazard darted inwardly across the opposition’s box and lashed into the near corner to settle the score at 2-0 – after having performed a perfectly executed one-two with Kevin de Bruyne to provide Chelsea a glimpse of what might have been had De Bruyne not been offloaded to Wolfsburg.

Yet, at an international level, Hazard does not remotely resemble the kind of talismanic influence as is the case on the club scene. On the continent, there are strong feelings that Hazard needs to give more through his performances for his country. As for whether Belgium rely on the player as much as Chelsea, the answer is no. He’s never really given them much reason too.

“But to be honest, he has to improve his stats in the national team. Where is he now? He has scored 5 goals, two of them were penalties, in almost 50 games,” Wilmots went on to say, having just compared the player to a player who had featured in two World Cup finals.

“That’s not enough. I wasn’t as talented as he was, but I’ve scored 29 goals for Belgium. I love Eden, but I ask him to be more decisive.”

Hazard scored 14 goals in 35 appearances during the Premier League season.

And this is a reasonably surprising discrepancy, given certain similarities between Chelsea and Belgium’s style of play. Both are defensively robust units. The Blues, of course, recorded the best defensive record in the league over the previous season, while Wilmot’s side conceded just four goals over the ten games during the World Cup qualification stages.

Further up field, what’s more, both to some extent channel their attacks down the wings and both are, as a result, liable to leave themselves exposed to opponents down the same area of the pitch.

Whatever the reason for his goalscoring record, however, given his Premier League performances and figures you can very much envision the Chelsea man shining at this summer’s tournament and in some sense, you have to sympathise with Hazard.

On one end, his national manager is questioning his complacency in front of goal while, at the other, his club-level coach is bellowing, ‘defend, defend, defend’. All the while, he has ferocious levels of pressure that accompany comparisons to Zinedine Zidane.