Eden Hazard is one of the best players in the history of Chelsea Football Club. He will be sorely missed by not just the West London club, but every member of the British football community.
Chelsea did manage to win the deal in the end. Marina Granovskaia should be very proud of structuring a deal that, should Eden Hazard fulfill all of the subclauses, could net the club as much as £150 million. That is what a player of Hazard’s class should be worth on the transfer market. And even though the market does appear to be slowly stabilizing, exceptional players will still garner exceptional fees.
Eden Hazard is now off to Madrid to fulfill his lifelong dream of playing there, and this appears to have been one of the best handled transfers in a very long time. Certainly when compared to Thibaut Courtois’s transfer to the same destination only a single year before, we can see the class in Granovskaia’s work.
It was a joy and a privilege to have Eden Hazard at Chelsea as long as the club did. The way he handled his exit was in keeping with his fantastic footballing stature. Only on rare occasions does a player appear to be as good a professional and person as he is a player, and Hazard is one of those cases. I personally wish only the best for Eden Hazard at Real Madrid, and hope he wins everything humanly possible during his time there. Perhaps after his time in Madrid he can come back to Chelsea in some manner. We will keep the light on for him.
Thank you, Eden Hazard.
Now Chelsea have an interesting summer ahead of them. Not only will Chelsea lose their best player, but apparently the manager as well. It shows the club’s changing ambitions and stature in world football that they’re likely going to lose both men to better situations for their respective ambitions.
Sarri, for all those who don’t like him and want him out, did accomplish everything he was tasked with at Chelsea last season. He finished in third place with a squad that doesn’t deserve to be there, as well as won a trophy. Despite this, the club is in such a strange place that he is likely on the way to Juventus, who have just won their eighth title in a row.
Hazard is doing the same with Real Madrid. Chelsea wasted the time they had with Eden Hazard. He was inarguably the third best player in the world on multiple occasions during his years in west London, and the Blues squandered that. It is likely going to be a long time before a player of that level is in the team again.
That may be better for the club. Hazard painted over many of the issues in the team for years. His talent was enough to drag a Chelsea side that simply isn’t very good or talented to trophies and titles on several occasions. But that also limited him. Chelsea never built a good enough platform for Hazard to showcase his skills. Their continued firing and hiring of managers meant he never had a coach who could help him reach the next level, and the ridiculous recruitment strategy has provided him with a series of mediocre and yet economically viable teammates.
Without Eden Hazard and given the current talent at the club, Chelsea are further from a trophy than they have been in a long time. That is something the higher-ups at the club finally need to see. This coming season they will be presented with that very blunt fact.
With a transfer ban, they will need some actual football thinking at the club, as opposed to the usual fiscal thinking alone.
A good football club does not need to buy players constantly or in a panic. They should have a coaching set up and squad that is well balanced and in the right standing contractually to overcome most hiccups and get the side through in a stable manner.
Chelsea have not developed that side of the club in years and now they’ll have to. The fact that every year Chelsea have another gaping hole in some area of the squad means that too little football know-how and planning is applied to the squad.
Transfers are unnecessary if the club does its jobs correctly and to the highest standard possible. They should be simply dressing, something that works within and to support an already-existing structure. Transfers at Chelsea have, for too long, been the focus of far more attention than they should have been. Now they’ll be forced to fix it.
No Eden Hazard, no replacement for him allowed to come in. Chelsea are going to have to learn and learn quickly, but it could be the best thing for them in the future if they learn their lessons properly. I only wish the transfer ban was longer.