Former Real Madrid player Eden Hazard spoke about being named the replacement for legendary figure Cristiano Ronaldo at the club during his time there.
Hazard was a brilliant player at Chelsea, but he was not able to transfer his skills from West London to Madrid, as poor work ethic, unfortunate injuries and all the knocks catching up to the Belgian's body meant that Hazard never had the best of times at the club.
He ended up leaving the club and retiring in 2023, with the two parties mutually deciding to end his contract prematurely.
Eden Hazard tells the truth about being named the Cristiano Ronaldo replacement
In a recent interview, he was asked about what it was like wearing Ronaldo's number seven jersey, to which he gave an honest but correct answer.
He said: “I didn’t want to take Cristiano’s #7 at the beginning.
"I wanted to take Modrić’s #10. I thought he was going to tell me to take it, but he didn’t (laughs).”
Hazard was the first big-money signing that Real Madrid made after Ronaldo's departure, and he played in Ronaldo's position. He was also the biggest signing the club had ever made, which brought the expectations even higher, and he also had the number 7 jersey on his back. Things looked great when he first joined because of how good he had been at Chelsea.
Obviously, things did not work out the way he wanted them to, but it is worth noting that he was never brought in to be Ronaldo's replacement. He was, if anything, the opposite of Ronaldo. He was shorter, a more tenacious dribbler (at least at the time), a worse finisher, potentially more agile.
Hazard was never going to score 40-50 goals a season, and even though people did not necessarily expected him to, the coincidences did raise the expectations more than Hazard would have liked.
Of course, that is not the reason why Hazard failed at Real Madrid, but it did not necessarily help. Even if Hazard arrived at the club in pristine condition, and kept playing his best football for a few more years, it would still not be a similar trajectory for their respective careers.
Hazard has always seemed more like a player wearing the number 10 than seven. It would have been nice to see the player flourish at Real Madrid, but everything has its pros and cons, and if he had succeeded, maybe we would not have seen Vinicius Jr become as good as he is at Real Madrid.
Add us as a preferred source on Google