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 the Chelsea Superstar 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 at 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 an aura 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 at 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 keep the ball. One such club is Barcelona, who invented the mesmerising “tiki-taka” brand of football.
It seems now that Lionel Messi himself has suggested the Catalan club’s board to try and bring in the Belgian to Barcelona. 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. However, with Dembele to return and Barcelona having paid a record sum for him, it would be unthinkable for any manager to leave the Frenchman on the bench.
Amongst the three forward players, Messi is untouchable and Dembele cannot replace Suarez as he cannot play as a forward. This would mean shared game time between Hazard and Dembele should the Belgian join Barcelona. Hazard gets regular time at Chelsea and it would be a step down for a player of his calibre to move to any team where he would have to share his time on the pitch, especially when he is at the prime of his career.
Moreover, it is highly unbelievable that Antonio Conte would ever allow his best player to switch clubs. No matter how good a dribbler Hazard is, he might not be able to weave his magic past the Italian gaffer.
