Real Madrid: Is Eden Hazard truly back as Carlo Ancelotti says?

Eden Hazard started two games straight for the first time in a while. The first one was Real Madrid’s draw vs Cadiz, which, to be fair, wasn’t a great performance by any means. Hazard individually had one good half, but the whole team was just really poor all around.

The second game was on Wednesday against Athletic Bilbao. Hazard played 86 minutes and couldn’t really get going. I don’t think it was a quality performance from the Belgian, who was subbed off for Peter Gonzalez.

After the game, Ancelotti was asked about Eden Hazard’s return to the line-up and the Italian coach said, “Yes, he’s back.” To be quite honest with you, I am not very sure what he was getting at.

Eden Hazard simply cannot be the best version of himself at Real Madrid

Out of four halves, Hazard only played well in one of them. And, mind you, that wasn’t even fantastic. It was good, I liked how he performed, but it wasn’t anything Hazard-esque, if that makes sense. It was just decent, not nearly good enough for him to have a return to the line-up for good.

And, even if it was better than I think it was, I don’t think just one good (or great) half out of four is good enough for Hazard to earn the starting spot back. Keep in mind that those three halves were bad. Hazard looked really off, and made a few really bad decisions. Ancelotti said he had a great game, and honestly, I just don’t see it the same way.

If we talk about his defense, well, yes, it did improve a little bit in these two games. He helped out defensively on a few occasions, but again, there’s not a single player in that position that doesn’t already do what Hazard did defensively. I think Asensio is the weakest defensively out of all these players, and even he provides at least as much as Hazard in the defensive third.

If you look at overall play, Asensio, even though he is very inconsistent and unreliable, still provides more than Hazard, which is very unfortunate but it is true. Asensio scores a few important goals, gets a couple of important assists, and even though he is a bystander in many games, he provides a lot more than Hazard on his best day. We haven’t seen Hazard’s best days since 2019, or else this wouldn’t be a topic of conversation.

Gareth Bale is injury prone, but he should be back soon, and I think that he gets to start the most out of all options available if his fitness stays proper. Rodrygo is a great option to have on the right as well, and even though he’s much better on the left, I think he provides much more than Hazard on both ends of the field. And, he’s a very underrated presser, which helps in a lot of ways.

All this must look like a lot of slander for Eden Hazard, and to be fair, it kind of is. But as much as I love the guy, I just don’t think he’s good enough anymore. He’s lost a lot of his pace, he is not able to take players on as well anymore, he doesn’t press a lot, he’s injury-prone, he doesn’t provide the team with anything that others don’t already have, and his best position simply cannot be accommodated at Real Madrid. He’d be better off at a club like Lille, who would apparently be open to getting him back into their team.

I don’t know what Ancelotti meant by his words, and I would really love to be wrong here, since he is one of my favorite players of all time, but at the moment, it just doesn’t seem likely.