Eden Hazard's biggest Chelsea mistake as impossible $156m Real Madrid transfer challenge set

Chelsea news: Eden Hazard's Real Madrid decision is an empty win for the Blues who achieved a feat of footballing trickery but for the worst cost imaginable.

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With the poetry, seamless timing and exquisite grace that Eden Hazard showed throughout seven years at Stamford Bridge as a player, it is only fitting that his inevitable announcement of departure from Real Madrid was so perfectly weighted.

Four years to the very week that both Chelsea and Los Blancos revealed to the world what they already knew, the 32-year-old's time was up in Spain. Just like nobody played any tricks in 2019, the whole show pulled off without a curtain or stage, in full view of the public, his ending was as obvious as the start.

He played more league minutes within 17 days of his final season in England than he did in the entirity of this purgatory year at Santiago Bernabeu. Cutting his deal short should come as no shock, this is a player that has forever engaged and indulged in this game for pure enjoyment.

The happy-go-lucky appearance of a plucky Belgian with all the talent of the world and some to spare appearing on the shores of England in 2012 had people scared from the very start. He was at the centre of a transfer saga, bidding war and Manchester City seduction package before they became popular.

When he, for some reason, chose Chelsea over the pick of Europe's elite, everyone knew they had missed out. His effortless gliding was apparent immediately and within seven minutes of his debut in Wigan it was potently clear what Chelsea had on their hands. That player is long gone.

He has been bound by shackles, the unavoidable black hole of Real Madrid has eaten him up and the body can no longer do as his mind wants. He used to send players spinning at the thought of jinxing one way or another, let alone combining that with the mocking smile he would glance back with as players were left wondering where had gone.

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Madrid didn't get much of this. There were glimpses. After a slow start, one plagued by injury and a pre-season recovery - he never was one to take this thing too seriously, there's a time for burgers and chips and another for getting ready for the game - Hazard sprung to life.

Having been arguably the best player on the planet in 2018 there was no surprise that he still had these levels and gears to shift through. Coming off the back of carrying Belgium through the Russian World Cup like a player on FIFA with the stats dialed up, it took him 14 minutes to show that it was business time.

Whether Hazard ever truly realised that Maurizio Sarri was the Chelsea manager upon his return, who really knows. This was his thing and the warning signs were there. 14 minutes it took him in an opening day win over Huddersfield, he was arguably man of the match. The ability to pick up the pace for a game after weeks away, to kiss the ball with his feet and caress it in a way so lovingly jovial that the Terriers realised just how much of a step up the Premier League was.

Hazard was a player before his time. Gary Neville insisted that he needed the numbers, the stats, the goals and assists to compete with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. This ignores everything that made Hazard the player he was. It wasn't about world domination, he was just the most gifted player of recent Chelsea history.

Hazard didn't have, or need, the drive to score 50 goals in a season, he just wanted to play, to be alive, to feel the air on the pitch and smell the panic of those taking it more seriously than him. These aren't attributes that make for success at Madrid.

The club of champions, of elite winners, of painfully modern impatience. This is a historic establishment that banished Gareth Bale. Take it less seriously than life or death and it's over.

This isn't even what cost Hazard. It's the painful part. For a few gleeting minutes and matches it looked as if he might actually be able to do this. After a transfer of more than £100m ($124m) it now appears that Madrid were desperately unlucky.

They didn't know that his body would break down and that a simple tackle from international teammate Thomas Meunier would, purely accidentally, effectively wipe one of the planet's best players from existence. In total, the deal has now cost Real in advance of £125.7m ($156.2m) due to add-ons.

For Chelsea to even hold onto him for this long felt new. At this time, Premier League players weren't at that level for that long without moving on. Hazard flirted with the idea of it, of course he did, it would be un-Hazard of him to not embrace every second as a joyful joke, but it didn't matter.

He left Chelsea with more than he could ever really give. One of the best individual seasons in league history. For an average side he moved them into the top four. With 16 goals and 15 assists he had a better ratio per90 than Harry Kane this season for contribution. That was the level, the single-handed, sheer arrogance to make it his thing every week and every match.

That season he was Chelsea.

There is no way to know what might have happened should he have stayed. With what can only be imagined as another tough pre-season he may have struggled to find those marveling planes of quality again. By this point he had played more than 2,500 league minutes per season in nine of his 10 years since turning 18. Maybe the writing was on the wall.

Hazard was never the superhuman gym hero of Ronaldo but he had the aura of an outerworldy being that didn't belong, such was his ability to blossom and bamboozle. Treat Hazard like the man he is, perfectly normal and unintentionally but totally hilarious, and it was perhaps obvious that he was on the verge.

Raheem Sterling is thought to have pushed his legs too far for a 28-year-old and has 26,000 career minutes, by 28, Hazard had over 30,000. This freak injury sustained in his first season might have been on the cards. He has never been an injury prone player but never truly recovered from this.

Shocked by something that not even he could forsee, Hazard has never really had to recover from time out of any of his professional teams. His fitness was a talking point for several days per year in pre-season before he got to work with the ball at his feet and showed why this was all such pointless talk. Footballing rules never did apply to a player too good to listen to them.

Metal plates, consistent niggles, thigh problems and the weight of sheer expectation all mounted. The Hazard of 2019 is long gone, never to return. He couldn't offer even a cameo role enough to make the most die-hard fans wonder if there's still light in the old eyes yet.

It's impossible to say that leaving Stamford Bridge was the cause of the downfall but many warned him. The grass isn't always greener but the insatiable pull, consistent desire to find out what the club is all about was too much. Perhaps, after walking through the league with disdainful ease for 38 games, Hazard thought he could be the player Neville wanted him to be.

He had combined fits and starts, patches of world-class form combined with small period of quiteness into one historic and memorable campaign. Unlike Mohamed Salah, who's volume of output was unlike anything for a winger when he joined, Hazard didn't need to put the ball in the net to show that this was all too easy for him.

Having the effect of looking like he was playing against school kids while maintaining the same older brother attitude throughout was his best skill. He cannot be blamed for seeing the potential path to world footballing greatness. It is a tempting road and one that, in another universe, could easily have seen him become the talisman for even Real.

Now the dying embers of a gift to football are left behind, with a wink and a handshake there is only hope that he will once again lace up the boots. Doing it at the top level or in a park, the boy in Hazard may well still be there, never to die out.

Chelsea here, have produced something so perfect that it hurts. Often it would be a point of comfort and gloat to produce a piece of business that cost the world giants over £15m ($17m) per goal scored across four years but with Hazard it is an empty victory. Chelsea will be challenged to do better work in their sales but must also focus on the success of even having a player that brings such enjoyment as him in the first place.