Football is a game heavily biased towards attacking players. The flair, the panache, the flaunt and the spotlight; it is all up for grabs for them while the defenders representing the bourgeois of football are left to manage the thankless task of keeping these illustrious men out of the front page of the next day’s newspapers. In the modern game, the case has become direr for defenders with lighter balls, scientific shoes that allow better control and referees handing out heavy punishment to errors of even the slightest margin.
However, looking on the bright side of things, what such adaptations have done is that it has seen the rise of modern day footballers. Short in stature with a low centre of gravity and a knack to run straight at defenders or craftily slide through killer passes, these players are in sharp contrast to the old bulky players of yesteryears in the Premier League.
A master of such a game is Chelsea ace, Eden Hazard. The Belgium National Team captain joined the Blues back in the summer of 2012. In his five year spell at the club, Chelsea has seen the worst and the best of Hazard and interestingly the form of the club has reflected the form of the player, such is the importance of the winger in the team.
On the day when Hazard plays, he is on par with the best in the world and cannot be touched let alone caught on the field. He dances and dazzles his way through and weaves a wave of magic on the pitch on his way to goal leaving fans and players mesmerized. However, such days are short in number and inconsistency is perhaps the only complaint any manager can have with the player.
Hazard is most dangerous when he has the ball on his feet and teammates rallying around him. Developments of different managerial patterns in the existing game would then suggest that the best place for Hazard right now would be a team who love to move with the ball. So where better than a certain Barcelona where Messi and company invented the tiki-taka football.
Hazard would seamlessly fit into the top three alongside Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi and would recreate the terror of the trio that existed during the days of Neymar. The deal that is being reported states that the Stamford Bridge outfit is less than impressed with Real Madrid’s tricks to poach Hazard and should the Belgian refuse to put pen to paper on a new contract at the Bridge, Chelsea are willing to swap him for Ousmane Dembele.
The 20-year-old winger moved to Barcelona for a mammoth fee but long-term injuries have seen the Frenchman most of his time sidelined. Chelsea could be ready to take him off Barcelona’s hands by offering them their gifted star in Hazard.
Dembele, should he move to London, will have no dearth of game time but will be expected to fill up the departing Belgian’s shoes as Chelsea’s chief troublemaker in the opponents’ final third. The deal is a long way away from happening as Barcelona is unlikely to let go of a player they signed last season and Hazard is yet to state that he is unhappy with his life in London.
