Chelsea Eden Hazard’s ‘selfishness’ saved the Blues from Maurizio Sarri’s

Maurizio Sarri’s fanboys are starting to turn on Eden Hazard, because of course they are. Hazard’s selfish play salvaged what little success Sarri can claim from his season at Chelsea.

Shortly after Kevin questioned our genre’s reason for being and Charlie chided us for taking head-on the nonsensical nothingness of Twitter morons, Scott asked me about the threshold which separates the one-time excreta of a random Chelsea fan from a point deserving of a counter-narrative fisking. Truly, we have an inquisitive and challenging bunch here.

Given the intellectual obscenity that is so much on Chelsea Twitter, I told him you don’t need really to define it because you know it when you see it. For example, when a stan account has thousands of engagements on a tweet saying Chelsea will be better off without Eden Hazard’s “selfishness” holding back the full blossom of Sarriball, and then you start seeing similar comments elsewhere in digital media, it’s time to stand athwart and yell “Stop!”

Beyond the banter, the irony of criticizing Eden Hazard for being too selfish under Maurizio Sarri is rich given how many times Antonio Conte wanted Hazard to be more selfish.

Of course, it’s not all that ironic when you consider how Conte’s only concern was to win, something Hazard is quite good at facilitating. Maurizio Sarri, on the other hand, is more concerned about the team implementing “his” style, with goals and wins being a delayed ambition.

Eden Hazard scored 16 goals and assisted 15 others in the Premier League this season. He added three more goals in the League Cup and one assist in the Europa League. Of his 19 goals, very few owe themselves to Maurizio Sarri and Sarriball. Most of his production was from him doing the sort of thing he can do in or – in Sarriball’s case, despite – the system.

Hazard scored four goals on penalty kicks. Two goals – in the League Cup against Liverpool and in the Premier League against West Ham – were pure solo efforts, the sort of dribbling and finishing masterclass that puts him into the conversation alongside Lionel Messi. He scored his first goal against Brighton on a counter-attack breakaway. Willian recovered the ball just inside Chelsea’s half and passed it to Hazard just inside Brighton’s half. Hazard had little issue staying clear of Brighton’s recovering defenders to take it all the way to the net.

Hazard’s equalizer against Wolves and second goal of the season against Brighton came from shots along the top of the box. The goal against Wolves was classic Hazard, moving laterally along the top of the box before laying a right-footed shot into a corner of the net.

A few other goals were one-two’s with Marcos Alonso or Olivier Giroud, a couple took advantage of confusion in the box, another involved a turnover at the top of the final third with a single pass sending Hazard in on goal.

At most, three goals came from a recognizably “Sarriball” sequence. These were usually on the counter-attack with one-touch passes, all forward. While Sarriball at Chelsea has been all about dominating passing and possession, this has resulted in few goals from Chelsea’s leading scorer. Those goals required either a bit of a mess from the opponent, or the individual brilliance of Eden Hazard.

Hazard has been Chelsea’s offensive cheat code since he arrived. When the Blues need a goal, the game plan reduces to get the ball to Eden Hazard on the left and let him take it from there. All other players simply need to open space or offer themselves as a useful option for a one-two.

If this is a problem for Maurizio Sarri and his apologists, then that is simply the martyrdom that so often follows ideology.

The fundamental tenet of coaching is getting the best out of your players. Maurizio Sarri has done that, but perhaps reluctantly. We know Sarri is deceptively pragmatic. When something is important is at stake – the League Cup, his job – he knows enough to park N’Golo Kante in front of the defence and feed the ball to Hazard (and play Callum Hudson-Odoi).

Eden Hazard’s most important moments this season were the product of him being Eden Hazard, not of him being in Maurizio Sarri’s team. Hazard – like Chelsea – made Sarri look good, not the other way around.

Without Hazard being Hazard, Chelsea would not have eliminated Liverpool in the League Cup and would not have salvaged a point against Wolves. That would have deprived the Blues of one of their finals and – all other things being equal – dropped Chelsea into fourth place. Of Hazard’s remaining 15 goals and 15 assists in the Premier League, if he had not Hazard-ed his way to just a handful of them, the Blues would have finished fifth and would need the Europa League title to qualify for the Champions League.

If not for Hazard doing what only he can do, Chelsea might still be passing the ball around at Anfield, Molineux or Brighton. Hazard’s “selfishness” – whether you want to define that as his unwillingness to be hemmed in by a system or any system’s inability to restrain him – is at the core of Maurizio Sarri’s minimal level of success this season.

If Maurizio Sarri would rather have “pure” “Sarriball,” then he is trading a certain number of Eden Hazard’s goals and assists in the cause of his Cause.

Eden Hazard single-handedly, selfishly, stood between Chelsea and Maurizio Sarri’s apparent dream to turn Chelsea into Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal. With Hazard likely to leave, next season Sarri will find out just how much Chelsea fans – as opposed to his personal toadies – will tolerate that transition.