The executioners of the French are facing.
European Champion title, won without trembling Lille in the previous round, Chelsea hosts Real Madrid, PSG nightmare.
It was at Stamford Bridge this quarter-finals held on Wednesday April 6th.
A stadium that familiar Thibaut Courtois and Eden Hazard.
The Belgian giant (1.99m) kept the cage for the Blues between 2014 and 2018. The winger wore the colors of the London club from 2012 to 2019. A year apart, one and the he other left the English capital to join Real Madrid... with very different successes.
Courtois, a galley season before blossoming
When he signed for the White House in August 2018 for compensation of around 40 million euros, Thibaut Courtois was one of the best players in the world in his position.
A few days earlier, he was crowned best goalkeeper of the World Cup in Russia.
And by joining Real, the Belgian international takes a new step.
His first year proves yet very complicated.
The Madrid club suffers orphan Cristiano Ronaldo and Thibaut Courtois is struggling.
Competition with Keylor Navas, the Costa Rican keeper who has won the last three Champions Leagues, causing trouble to the point that in Madrid, some are questioning the merits of this recruitment.
Since then, critics have given way to praise.
Keylor Navas left for Paris and Thibaut Courtois took on a new dimension.
Indisputable in the cage, the Belgian multiplies the big performances.
Real finished 2020 Spanish champions with the best defense (25 goals conceded).
Over the current season, Courtois' parades go perfectly with Karim Benzema's serial goals: the Merengues are comfortably at the top of La Liga.
🤍 pic.twitter.com/0lHldZRTcb
- Real Madrid CF (@realmadrid) April 2, 2022
The doorman is now unanimously.
The socios love their ever-present player.
Not sure that it beguile side Chelsea, where supporters have little appreciated his departure to the point of treating the "snake" ( "snake").
"Chelsea will remain a task for me. They helped me to become the goalkeeper I am today. (...) It is always a pleasure to play against them," he told Thibaut Courtois in his podcast " Thibaut Talks ", although he knows there will be" necessarily whistles "to her.
Hazard struck by a cascade of injury
Eden Hazard will be spared him the boos.
And for good reason: it will not be on the field.
The former Lille needed surgery to remove a plate to be of the right leg, put there a year ago after a crack of the fibula.
The No. 7 might not play again before the end of the 2021-2022 season, during which he appeared only 22 times, for a time of less than average game in 40 minutes per game.
His stats are starving: a goal scored and two assists.
To say that the White House brooding about the Belgian.
When he was hired in June 2019 to over 100 million euros, the Spanish club thought holding his new playmaker.
But then, Eden Hazard chains since injuries and relapses: 22 appearances in 2019-2020 (one goal, seven assists) in 21 appearances from 2020 to 2021 (four goals, one assist), and therefore this year's 2021-2022 ilk.
In total, he has been absent on injuries for more than 460 days in the last three years.
The will-o'-the-wisp which put the defenses to the torture with Lille and Chelsea has largely lost its luster.
At 31, he no longer has much support within Real Madrid, where we have almost drawn a line on him and where we dream of Kylian Mbappé as the next jewel.
Even when Eden Hazard is available, coach Carlo Ancelotti sees him as little more than a replacement, well behind Karim Benzema, Vinicius, Rodrygo and Marco Asensio in the attacking hierarchy.
In addition to its sporty ordeal in Spain, Eden Hazard has alienated supporters there less than a year by committing an odd: while Real had just been eliminated in the semifinals of the Champions League ... by Chelsea, it was hilarious appeared alongside his former teammates.
It seems far away, the time it shone in the other camp.
Real Madrid striker Eden Hazard off balance in a duel with Chelsea defender Thiago Silva, May 5, 2021. © Alastair Grant, AP
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