In an interview with the newspaper l’Equipe, the Red Devil recounts his unique career. To the question “Could you be seen as pretentious?” the ex-blue replies: “Even a little shit, I think. I’d come in, I wouldn’t even tie my shoelaces, and I’d say, “Go ahead, you’re good to go.” Afterwards, they saw. Above all, they saw that I was not talking in the wind. “Give me the ball,” OK, bam, bam, goal! The guys go “wow”. In the end, what was the most important thing? You’re good, you win, you take bonuses, everyone is happy. I had this “I don’t care” side, little shit on the field, but, off it, I was respectful. I wasn’t causing shit in the locker room. I was laughing with everyone.”
Admired for his sensational appearances in his early days at LOSC, then across the Channel at Chelsea, Hazard is also known for a failure, that of his transfer to Real Madrid, and he does not hide it. “In fact, I was more stressed towards the end, when I was playing less. I had to play, I had to show. I don’t know if it was stress. But I could say to myself “go ahead, I’m not well, you know what, don’t give me the ball”. At Real, I had the impression that I was going to lose him before I had him.
Renowned for his spontaneity and his neglect of professional obligations, the native of La Louvière is not the “role model” par excellence and he knows it. “If I had been like Cristiano, that’s the example, there are others, I would have burned out. It wouldn’t have been me. After a meeting, go for an hour in the cold bath, no. Leave me alone, with my friends, we go home, we play cards, we drink a beer. I play for two hours with my sons in the garden. It was my recovery.”
After fifteen years at the top level, Eden Hazard has well deserved his rest.
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