• Problems for Real Madrid.Hazard, between two and three months off

That "does not look good" that released, very serious, Zinedine Zidane just a few minutes after finishing Levante-Real Madrid on Saturday summarized the feelings of the coaching staff about Eden Hazard's injury. The Belgian soccer player seemed to have resented the same physical problem that had kept him almost three months in the dry dock, between the end of November and mid-February.

Finally, it was not a relapse, but a new lesion in a nearby area, but different from the previous one. Similar in terms of deadlines, although much more decisive, influential and worrying for Real Madrid. The "crack in the right distal fibula" of the attacker came four days before the first leg of the knockout stages of the Champions League, a week of classic, when Madrid has just delivered the league lead from Barcelona, and in the middle of a crisis of results in the white team, which has only been able to add one of the last six points at stake after drawing against Celta and falling by the minimum in the Ciutat de Valencia.

As soon, and being very optimistic, Hazard would return just for a hypothetical Champions League semifinals , whose first leg will be played on April 28 and 29, and for the last five days of the League. But the times of the Belgian in his first injury, which kept him out of play from November 26 to February 15, when he was discharged, speak of a withdrawal time of two and a half months. The League ends on May 24 ... So, with Belgium as a favorite in a European Championship that starts in less than four months, Hazard could have already played his last minutes in the 19-20 season, his first in Madrid.

«Eden takes rhythm with the matches»

Joel Domenighetti, a journalist from L'Equipe who has been following the Belgian since his time in Lille , explains on the other side of the phone that the former Chelsea attacker has "a unique musculature", that he had not had "any major muscle problem", that he doesn't like to train too much, but that he "takes the form with the passing of the matches." Hazard likes to play, compete, like any street player . "He takes care of himself, he doesn't drink, he doesn't party ... He is a family man and has fulfilled his dream, which is to play in Madrid." But...

Eight months after his signing, Hazard's dream is summed up in 15 official meetings dressed in white. He has lost 20 games and, after the new injury suffered at the Ciutat de Valencia, is on his way to being absent for another ten weeks.

Hazard, in the Ciutat de Valencia / Reuters

The devastating fact that speaks of the bad luck of Hazard and Madrid is that those 20 games that the Belgian has missed are the same that he stopped playing in the seven years he was at Chelsea: two for a thigh injury in 12-13, five for a wound and five for hip problems on 15-16, two for a blow and three for an ankle operation at the end of 16-17, and three for thigh problems during the 18-19, his last in the blues. All were minor injuries, except for the ankle operation to which he underwent in the summer of 2017 taking advantage of the holiday break. None that left sequels. None that involve missing more than five games. None like the two who have already suffered dressed in white.

Hazard admitted during the Christmas break in summer took some weight, but added the same theory of a newspaper journalist Domenighetti this: "I am of those who lose quickly." «If I am on vacation, I am on vacation. In summer I took five kilos and it took me a while to catch up, ”the Belgian acknowledged in January.

Everything he had done in the summers and in the preseason with Lille and Chelsea fell apart when he suffered an injury to the anterior rectus of the left thigh in the middle of the pre-season meringue. That, something that had never happened to him in any summer preparation so far, disrupted all his plans, physical and mental .

The player who arrived with the obligation to put on the '7' of Cristiano, who had been dreaming of playing at the Bernabéu for years, was not going to be able to demonstrate from the beginning everything he had in his boots. He made his debut on September 14, in what was the beginning of his preseason, and when he had been without problems for two months and began to take the peak, Meunier arrived. An entry on the side of the PSG caused a blow that, although at first it did not seem too serious, as the days went by it evolved into a fissure that took him out until the Celtic game.

For a player accustomed to taking the form playing matches, being without stepping on the grass for so many weeks disrupts all plans. Even more so if that player has inherited the white seven in a team that, for too many days, has an obvious problem with the goal. A Madrid that, in addition, could have waited a year to sign him for free, but that forced him to convince Chelsea and sign him at his theoretical ideal moment, with 28 years - he turned 29 in January -, and that he may have finally paid more than 100 million for only 15 games of his new star.

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  • Eden Hazard
  • Real Madrid
  • Valencia
  • Zinedine Zidane
  • Cristiano Ronaldo
  • First division
  • Premier League
  • football

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