Madrid worst singing Hazard is torn between MLS and retirement

Most budget-shattering signings at Real Madrid are judged on, among other things, how they perform in Clasicos.

It will never cease to be staggering that in four seasons Eden Hazard never played in a single one in Spain.

He has been the club's top earner, on around £ 400,000 a week, since he joined in 2019 with the job of filling the void left by Cristiano Ronaldo. 

No one questioned the signing at the time because Hazard was coming off the back of a season in which he had scored 21 goals for Chelsea leading them to Europa League success.

But from the first week when, as he would later admit, he turned up in less than optimum condition, things went wrong. 

He believed that he would get fit by playing but that philosophy doesn't work at Real Madrid where you have to have reached a level of fitness to get into the team in the first place.

He needed to have the sort of personality that some of those who have played alongside him say he never really possessed.

His former Chelsea team-mate Filipe Luis told Mail Sport: 'Eden's the best I've played with. He's up there with Lionel Messi, winning games alone.

But he didn't run to defend much, didn't train well, and five minutes before games he'd be playing Mario Kart in the dressing room.

 

'He trained and warmed up laces untied. But he'd go out and no one could take the ball off him. He'd dribble three or four. If opponents got too close, he'd just pull away; he was so powerful.'

That power, coupled with a low sense of gravity and an acceleration over short distances that left defenders in his wake, never showed itself. There was bad luck too.

In his first season, once he had shed the five kilos excess baggage he arrived with, Madrid fans started to see sparkles of his unquestionable brilliance but in a big Champions League game against Paris Saint-Germain that November a kick from his international team-mate Thomas Meunier sent him back to square one.

The sustained ankle injury kept him out until the end of the following January and there were only 14 starts in that first season.

For a long time he kept the Madrid supporters on side. They were too busy booing Gareth Bale to pay him much attention and the feeling was that sooner or later he would find his old Chelsea form.

But he made just seven league starts in both of the next two seasons and the improvement never came. 

He began to lose favour and plenty joined the pile-on when he was seen laughing with Kurt Zouma after Chelsea knocked Real Madrid out of the Champions League in 2021. 

He tweeted an apology at the time: 'I have read many opinions about me, and it was not my intention to offend Real Madrid supporters. It has always been my dream to play for the club and I came here to win things.' But the tide of opinion had turned.

It had always been his dream to turn out for Real Madrid. In a Sport/Foot Magazine interview in his first year he said: 'Playing in my backyard I always pretended to be Real Madrid. Zidane was my idol. I used to watch the Bernabeu on TV and it was magical. The impeccable, white shirt.'

'I'm fed up with having to watch old videos of him in a Chelsea shirt to see the old Hazard' said celebrity Real Madrid fan Tomas Roncero. And Marca's editorial called him, 'the worst signing in the club's history, at least until he proves otherwise' – he never did.

Madrid paid around £100million (€115m) for him but add-ons would have taken the figure closer to £130m (€150m). 

Most of the targets were never met because he played only 76 games in four years but that serves as scant consolation to the club as they agreed at the weekend to write-off his final year and allow him to leave after four forgettable seasons.

Meanwhile, Vancouver Whitecaps are one of the said interested in signing Hazard, and he could face off against Lionel Messi if he does move to the US, with the Argentine set to join Inter Miami, having decided against re-joining Barcelona.

It could be very disappointing to see Hazard end his playing days with a whimper. His Real Madrid stint was an unmitigated disaster, but he now has the chance to resurrect his career.