With 13 minutes left at Valdebebas on Saturday night a man appeared who Chelsea fans will remember fondly and Real Madrid fans may struggle to remember at all. Forty-one days later, Eden Hazard finally returned. It wasn’t long and there wasn’t much – a swift run at the Betis defence which ended with a pass to Vinícius Júnior when he might have taken a shot himself, a fleeting glimpse of the player he once was – but it was something, the Belgian fit again in time to face his former club.
“He had spark, energy. He had no pain and the feelings are good,” Zinedine Zidane said and he was not the only one. The sports newspaper AS called his return a shaft of light. “You could tell that he’s in good shape,” Thibaut Courtois insisted after the game, a 0-0 draw that damaged Madrid’s chances of winning the league and suggested their minds are drawn more to the Champions League. “He has trained with us for two or three weeks and he looked very good,” the goalkeeper continued. “He will be very important for us from now until the end of the season.”
There was just one problem with that judgment: it has been heard before, and invariably in vain. Unlike Courtois, who has overcome a difficult start when he was all too aware that some in the dressing room hadn’t welcomed his arrival in place of Keylor Navas, to become fundamental, Hazard has not yet been important for Madrid. Put bluntly, he has been irrelevant. Mostly, he has just been absent.
This was not an injury, it was another injury. Thigh, calf, groin, ankle and Covid, the Belgian has had them all. He is returning from his fifth injury of this season alone. He played those 13 minutes on Saturday, although that could be considered progress: last time, he lasted 15 and then was out again. “Something is happening. I can’t explain these things any more,” Zidane had said, a hint of exasperation and fatalism in his words that should not have surprised. “I just hope it’s not a big deal; I want to try to be positive.”
In his entire time at Chelsea, seven seasons at Stamford Bridge, Hazard missed 18 games through injury, playing more than 30 league games every year. At Madrid, he has missed 45 league games alone. He has played only three times in the Champions League this season; last year, the extension of the season due to Covid gave him a second chance. They waited for him, held his place, handing it back as soon as they could, and he appeared for the last 16 against Manchester City. Clearly unfit, he made no impact. That too has been a recurring theme.
Zidane had long been an admirer, declaring him the player he most enjoyed watching after Cristiano Ronaldo well before Madrid bought him. “I would take Eden with my eyes closed,” he said, a decade before he actually did. According to HLN, the Belgian newspaper, he cost Madrid €160m, not the €100m the club claimed, even though he had only one year left on his contract at Chelsea: with Hazard unwilling to force his way out, the Spanish club had been made to wait longer than planned, rarely something they are prepared to do. He was handed the number seven, worn by Ronaldo, Raúl González and Emilio Butragueño.
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The return has been four goals – against Internazionale, Granada, Huesca and Alavés. Compare that to 13, 17, 19, 6, 17, 17 and 21 at Chelsea. Player of the year in England, in Spain Hazard has barely been a player at all. It is hard to recall much of real note, any outstanding games. Because Madrid won the league last season largely without him and without fans too, it rarely became a question of state. He escaped the attacks other players had been subjected to, but with time the attention was increasing, the criticism too.
Hazard admitted that he arrived at Madrid in 2019 overweight, and the last two seasons may be seen in the context of Filipe Luís’s suggestion that he might lack the ambition to be the best, because he certainly doesn’t lack the talent. “Honey,” the Brazilian defender called him. When Courtois promised that he would “explode” in the autumn it was greeted with cruel, inevitable jokes.
Fundamentally, though, he has just been desperately unfortunate, two ankle injuries effectively costing him six months. Muscle injuries have followed. His doctor with the Belgian national team suggested his body was at the limit, that the “mental stress can be reflected in his muscles”, increasing his propensity to injury – an explanation Zidane didn’t accept.
Zidane invariably put Hazard in as soon as he could. It could feel at times like he was waiting for the Belgian, conditioning his planning and occupying his thoughts to the detriment of other players who had sometimes deserved more. He had, after all, waited so long; he had been an admirer for so many years.
This time there was no hurry. Hazard’s recovery was handled by his own doctors, taken slow. That he has spent almost three weeks with the team before returning is eloquent, maybe a reason for optimism too, and it is likely that he will be on the bench against Chelsea. But if there is a moment, it is now.
“I don’t know if it will be with me or with another [coach] because he has a long-term contract, but I just want people to see the player he is,” Zidane said. “And that will come.” Tuesday night would be a good place to start.
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