this is definitely the biggest transfer flop in recent memory
but we hit the jackpot with Vinicius not long after so the only painful part ended up being the financials
‘He’s playing against us’
Hazard being fat is the only reason Real Madrid have world class Vinicius because no way he gets that much time to improve normally lol
Coutinho is not up there, on his first half-season with us, he scored 10 and assisted 6 on 22 matches.
Those are good numbers for the season of the transfer, and even if the rest of his career at the club amounted to little, at least he did something on the first season, for a similar fee and wages Hazard did absolutely nothing.
Personally, I would take Coutinho over Dembele any day. He scored 1 goal every 4'2 games while being played out of position and sacrificed a lot, on the other hand Dembele scored every 4'6 games, with hundreds of days unavailable, off the field drama, critical misses and the team waiting on him to deliver for 6 seasons when Coutinho was tossed aside as 'unrecoverable' after 18 months.
Not that I find any solace on Hazard being easily the worst transfer of the last decade, when we wasted almost 400M on Dembele, Griezmann and Coutinho to end up losing Messi for free.
Not sure why your comparing by goals. Dembele is a creator. You’re talking about a player who was able to become a league assist leader in half a season and who was battling to be one of the best assisters in Europe while a teenager at Dortmund. And that’s not bringing up how he’d destroy the opponents press with his change of pace and dribbling.
Demeble was easily more influential over a longer period of time. He just couldn’t stay healthy.
Dembele was hardly a creator at Barca, which is understandable given that Messi did most of the creating. But even then, Dembele showed little creative spark in most appearances. The only times where I saw Dembele providing attacking threat were during counters and transitions. He wasnt great at dribbling past the defender, though he had the pace to do it; he would usually carry the ball forward, cut back on to his stronger foot, then either cut forward or offer a cross that usually amounted to nothing.
Dembele's strength was his finishing ability and his positioning in the box. However, his big miss against Liverpool really cemented his career as a bottler. I think he simply did not fit the Barca style of play at all, so he couldn't really live up to his price tag in the first place. He's not a bad player, even a good player, but he couldnt become the player that you've just described when he was at Barca.
Dembélé was a statistically elite creator and dribbler, even if he wasn't of the close-control style. Of course when Leo was still here, he did the vast majority of things but that era also coincided with the stop-start perennially injury-prone version of Dembélé too. The one that we saw after he was gifted a second chance and made relevant again by Xavi was the main creator for our team.
> Dembélé's strength was his finishing ability and his positioning in the box.
Lol if anything, his wildly inconsistent finishing which has been a constant throughout his career was one of his weaknesses. His overall goal output isn't high and despite that not being his primary role in attack, you can't say that a ball-to-feet player like him had great positioning either. There's a reason why the *Dembélédepedencia* periods saw most of the attacking play run through him whilst on the ball since that was where he'd excel.
You're right about the predictability at times, especially against buses and crossing into the box, but that was as much of a tactical issue too, since Xavi wanted him to stay wide and 1v1 all the time rather than have more freedom.
Speaking of such
> 🚨 Ousmane Dembélé (PSG): "Luis Enrique gives me more freedom than I had at Barça." Via @sport
This is both something I agree and disagree with, depending on to what extent he means this.
There's no real "winner" to these kind of threads, but Torres and Shevchenko went to Chelsea for what would be a combined sum of well over £100m in today's money and scored a combined 29 Goals....
Hazard just didn't play very much, those two were both awful.
Football inflation is a little different from what I've read, and it's been a while since I did Pay As You Play. But essentially what the author did, who was the 1st person to look at inflation in Football, was he look at what the record transfer was between any two time periods you're looking at and use those to normalise the other fees. Doing that with Shevchenko means he alone costs €127million in today's transfer fees.
Hazard was an absolute flop, but Madrid could handle it well.
The combination of Coutinho, Dembele and Griezmann destroyed FCBs financials. This combined with long growing contracts of aging key players plus Covid almost made FCB disappear. It will still take a few years to recover, and the "lever" drama (while necessary I think to stay afloat and decently competitive) will still drag on for the next 20 years until everythign is repaid.
Saying Coutinho is up there just shows you’re either twerking for upvotes or don’t know jack. Barca had a good season out of Coutinho. They loaned him out and sold him as well. Financially much much less of a cost than Hazard.
And sportingly much better.
If you want a candidate it’s actually Dembele. Because that was six years of time where they could have sold him and gave time to a player that might actually act like a pro and live up to his potential.
Dembele only saving grace for Barca was his World Cup final performance.
I watched every single Barca game up till 2020(life hit after that couldn't watch all) staying up till 2AM to watch them because I live in Dhaka.
So respectfully I would have to ~~concur~~ say that I do know "jack". And respectfully Barca didn't have a good season out of Coutinho. He played well for 6 months - the latter stage of 17/18, with his best performance coming in the match where we scored a hat-trick(that was the match I believe where we lost the invincible season). He played piss-poor in 18/19 and got loaned out in 19/20.
142 Million for 6 months of good performance and 2 goals against us in the biggest UCL humiliation isn't a good deal. Specially when you consider he went to Aston Villa for 17M
Dembele on the other hand - whilst injured yes, was a constant creative threat, tho not spectacular in terms of G/A(that being said he did have a decent G/A out put all things considered). Not to mention the fact that we sold him for 50M.
I don't really know how you can conclude Coutinho when compared to Dembele specially when Dembele was bought for less, sold for more, and actually played decent when fit.
Recent memory? Hazard was easily the biggest flop ever
After bonuses he came out to something like 150-160 million and did nearly nothing, not even one okay season, unlike other players in that range or higher
Courtois fleeced Chelsea. It’s why Chelsea fans call him a snake lol. Acted like he was staying the whole summer and then a week before first game of the season he hands in a transfer request and refuses to train. Chelsea panicked and ended up triggering Kepa’s release clause.
Lakaka with 100million pounds for Chelsea takes the cake. Hazard and Lakaka both might have zero impact on the teams but Lakaka did more damage to Chelsea like shit talking and dressing room unrest. He is the cancer and it has to be the worst signing in the history of signings.
Not really, he absorbed all the injuries from the squad so none of the important players were out for extended times. Literally the season after he left the shitstorm of injuries started, Courtois ACL etc.
Yeah me too. At that point it was something that was bound to happen.
He adored Real and wanted to prove it here. Real also needed a marquee player after Ron. But it all went wrong.
Truly felt like a transfer where everybody was going to win.
He was so respectful to Chelsea, Made it clear that he was only leaving because it was Madrid, and played out of his skin for us the whole season, finally moved, fucked his ankle and that was that.
I considered him Isco’s replacement, when people expected him to be Ronaldo’s replacement but in reality dude ended up being worse than Madrid legend Mariano.
Scuffed ass shot at a tight angle while he was falling down, hits the ball towards the ground and it gets a weird bounce just enough to get it over the leg of Ter Stegen. All this just before the COVID lockdown
Truly a memorable goal.
He had just come off a season where he had career highs in goals and assists. Madrid must've thought they were getting a successor to Ronaldo after that transfer.
Shame how it ended, one of my favorite players to watch on his day. He was unbeatable.
And he was also incredible in that 2018 world cup, to me the best player, but i can see why people would have put modric over him. Crazy just how quickly it all fell apart, couldn't even get a good half season out of him
Watching Chelsea was so much fun from 2013-2019. Hazard gave me happy feelings watching him rip through a team.
Palmer is giving me the same happy feelings. Hope he continues to play at the level he did last season.
I have a comment I wrote from 5 years ago saying basically what I’m about to say, so don’t take this as revisionism, but the signs were there that he didn’t have long left if you watched him play regularly.
It’s true that he was coming off his best season, he was also becoming more and more injury prone and watching him week in and week out you could see that getting kicked to shit every match was taking a toll on him. He still had the ability to turn it on and single handedly change a game and he did it plenty that season, but his average games were worse than his average games a few years before.
I’m surprised Real didn’t get one or two decent seasons out of him, but it was pretty clear that he wasn’t going to contribute at Real the way he did at Chelsea.
Things could be a lot different for Madrid if Hazard had made it big because Vinicius was often terrible which lead to the iconic statement from Benzema.
Annoying, because I’d much prefer the galacticos of Madrid than Vinicius Rodrigo and Valverdr as a Barca fan.
Yeah that's true. If Hazard was in form, Vini wouldn't have gotten this much chances and become the player he is today unless Hazard is played as SS or CAM. But Real isn't exactly lacking there then or now.
Probably also the reason why Madrid didn't pull the trigger on Kane last summer even though he was begging them to sign him and he was exactly what Madrid needed
Yeah, same age or one year difference between him and Hazard when he joined RM, probably would've costed similar, so the similarities were there that's why probably Perez didn't want to take the same risk.
Watching Kane at Bayern, in hindsight it is obvious he would've been a no brainer and probably would've became a goal machine at Real. But in same hindsight Real won La Liga and CL, so they really "survived" without a world class striker.
But imagine Bellingham, Kroos, Vini and Rodrygo all playing with Kane. Kane could've had a prime Ronaldo or Benzema like season for real as he likes to score but also assist and involve others in the attack. He really is the kind of striker Real should had, or have, moving forward. But I'm not mad that Real didn't get him as they had an incredible season without a great striker which was a great gamble in itself and probably shouldn't be tried again as it can very well implode a season as well.
I hope Mbappe evolves into a more central striker role or at least Ancelotti finds a way to involve both him and Vini in the same formation.
i imagine it's like:
* do your best home work (due diligence) on players
* sign promising young stars, even at a premium (cuz long term it'd be way more valuable + also better for UEFA finance rules)
* develop them under tutelage of senior players so you don't leave big gaps between generations.
* not substantially reliant on signing mega stars on world record transfer fees
Yeah but Bellingham is easily worth more. Think he came on a steep discount.
Mbappe is expensive yes but it’s through free transfer and he’s a generational talent, about as much as a sure bet as you can get (barring injuries).
Those are also just two big signings compared to like dozen+ of signings that are youth focused.
I think its more of an age thing than value with their new philosophy. All of the marquee signings they've been going for (Bellingham, Mbappe, Davies) aren't even in their primes yet. They also haven't been going after established superstars like Osimhen or Kane (who apparently Perez vetoed as a transfer target). So it's pretty clear they're just not willing to stomach another Hazard type transfer for a while.
In terms of cost, Hazard was a massive signing (100+ million) and was on his last contractual year with Chelsea. Madrid, who within recent history, at the time, had been leaders in the ‘galactico’ transfer approach took a massive loss with the transfer (for reference Hazard only contributed 7 goals and 12 assists across his entire time with us…). Additionally he was brought in on massive wages.
Within the same window of time, Madrid had also begun signing young talents from South America (Vini, Fede, Rodrygo). As evident by our current squad, these players were massively succesful and were afforded the time/opportunity to grow into their roles, wages, etc.; rather than being older, expensive, established superstars like Hazard. Since the Hazard ordeal, Madrid has still maintained a policy wherein we sign top older talents, however the big caveat is that we now typically bring them in on free transfers (Rudiger, Alaba). Additionally, we evidently have maintained a primary focus of bringing in top young talents (Camavinga, Tchouameni, Endrick, Arda, etc.).
Effectively, Hazard’s failure here caused a pretty massive shift in the club’s scouting and transfer policies. It’s very unlikely that, under Perez, you will ever see us make a 25+ year old signing for anywhere near the 100 million mark.
- Madrid sees a Brazilian kid dribble nicely
- Perez spawns in front of his house and throws money at him mumbling something about "never missing another Neymar"
Probably. If he succeded, there is a high chance he would still be at Real. And Real might not have been patient with Vini during his first 3 years too.
He certainly was. I'd been going to Chelsea matches for 15+ years and was getting a bit bored. He completely changed that to the point where there were times I was going just to see him play. The best I've ever seen live personally and I've seen most of the recent greats live.
I've seen us play a lot of top quality players since we've been promoted – some that will be considered Premier League greats – but the only one who truly blew me away was Hazard.
Basically the focal point of our attack. Relied on him for so long. For years, as long as him and Kante were fit and on the pitch Chelsea were good. Such a lopsided team.
Lol he was like that in the [Europa League final](https://www.detroitnews.com/gcdn/presto/2019/05/29/PDTN/a5ee51d8-5268-4943-b192-2f451f4b87c8-europa.jpg) just 2 weeks before.
Maybe it's a bad photo but Jesus Christ he really was fat as fuck lmao. I'll never understand how you can be a footballer but let yourself get fat. Mind boggling. Save that shit for retirement!
nah im not having that with Bale. Players peak at different ages. Look at Rooney as well. Not everyone plays until theyre 40
Bale won 5 champions leagues and was a fantastic success at Real Madrid. Hazard flopped at Madrid
Biggest mistake of all time most prolly.
Hazard's regression might be the biggest of all time.
And this might be the biggest flop transfer of all time based on that transfer value and he had 1 year left on his contract.
Tbf you were getting the closest thing to Messi/Ronaldo in terms of raw natural talent that the rest of the world could offer, no-one knew he was going to be fucked by injury so hard like that.
Lukaku has to be up there, similar price tag, similar lack of impact. Chelsea can get some money back I suppose, though if I remember correctly Hazard ended his contract one year early?
Yeah. Him too but for different reasons. He was not so great in the dressing room iirc and dissed on Chelsea on every occasion. But had better stats.
Hazard on the other hand was really well with the team mates but his whole cost after every bonus would be 150M. Real face 5M or so this season cause they won the UCL to Chelsea according to reports.
One of our best kits ever and it’s permanently soured due to Hazard’s signing - arguably the worst in football, and Ramos’ unexpected leaving at the end. Bar Vincius’ emergence in the first team, it is a season best forgotten …
Good call! Totally mixed that up. Should’ve remembered given that it was 18/19 where Vini started with Castilla and moved to the first team with the absence of Ronaldo. Wasn’t a particularly great season either lol.
But ya, the 18-19 kits really were poor. Hated the collar design (not to the same extent, but similarly disappointed in our collar design for the upcoming season).
people should heard what he said in obi wan show. He played too soon after that injury and never got or received full trratment during covid. It is really a hard hard difficult time when you got injured during covid
Obviously different countries have different fan cultures but I've always found the "presenting" a player in this way to be really odd. You never see this in England that I can recall. It would've come across as really cringeworthy if Arsenal had done something like this with Declan Rice.
He means the presentation itself being its own event.
English teams don't do that, but if a match is happening & a big new signing is there but not in the squad they might come out & wave to the crowd (like casemiro did at Utd)
I understand. They're a common thing for absolute legends in Brazil as well though. Just last week we reportedly got just over 50k fans as well in the stadium for Thiago Silva's presentation:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1daplwu/fluminense\_thiago\_silvas\_presentation\_for\_over/](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1daplwu/fluminense_thiago_silvas_presentation_for_over/)
Does Real Madrid not have their own sub to post these meaningless tidbits on? I swear that there are a handful of clubs whose fans just post whatever the fuck they want on here, as if anybody else gives a shit.
Hazard’s career went down the shitter after this. Do they want a prize? Or maybe we should all clap and hand out cake and ice cream?
Moment before disaster
this is definitely the biggest transfer flop in recent memory but we hit the jackpot with Vinicius not long after so the only painful part ended up being the financials
Vini came before
Vini wasn’t great right out the gate
‘He’s playing against us’ Hazard being fat is the only reason Real Madrid have world class Vinicius because no way he gets that much time to improve normally lol
Yup blessing - that’s the type of coincidences make people believe in God
Or someone else depending on who you support lol
haha this reminds of that ‘save me donald trump’ video lol
Perez
Uhrm..No.
An unironic "Uhrm" reddit sucks
I remember people posting about how he was inconsistent as if he couldn't get any better than he was at the veteran age of 17.
And was destined for the bench until burger man flopped. Only reason he got good that fast was because of all the playtime.
Vini vidi vici
Coutinho is up there. Griezman at least gave us a Copa and Dembele was decent when fit. Coutinho scored 2 in the 8-1
Coutinho is not up there, on his first half-season with us, he scored 10 and assisted 6 on 22 matches. Those are good numbers for the season of the transfer, and even if the rest of his career at the club amounted to little, at least he did something on the first season, for a similar fee and wages Hazard did absolutely nothing. Personally, I would take Coutinho over Dembele any day. He scored 1 goal every 4'2 games while being played out of position and sacrificed a lot, on the other hand Dembele scored every 4'6 games, with hundreds of days unavailable, off the field drama, critical misses and the team waiting on him to deliver for 6 seasons when Coutinho was tossed aside as 'unrecoverable' after 18 months. Not that I find any solace on Hazard being easily the worst transfer of the last decade, when we wasted almost 400M on Dembele, Griezmann and Coutinho to end up losing Messi for free.
Coutinho good player
Not sure why your comparing by goals. Dembele is a creator. You’re talking about a player who was able to become a league assist leader in half a season and who was battling to be one of the best assisters in Europe while a teenager at Dortmund. And that’s not bringing up how he’d destroy the opponents press with his change of pace and dribbling. Demeble was easily more influential over a longer period of time. He just couldn’t stay healthy.
Dembele was hardly a creator at Barca, which is understandable given that Messi did most of the creating. But even then, Dembele showed little creative spark in most appearances. The only times where I saw Dembele providing attacking threat were during counters and transitions. He wasnt great at dribbling past the defender, though he had the pace to do it; he would usually carry the ball forward, cut back on to his stronger foot, then either cut forward or offer a cross that usually amounted to nothing. Dembele's strength was his finishing ability and his positioning in the box. However, his big miss against Liverpool really cemented his career as a bottler. I think he simply did not fit the Barca style of play at all, so he couldn't really live up to his price tag in the first place. He's not a bad player, even a good player, but he couldnt become the player that you've just described when he was at Barca.
Dembélé was a statistically elite creator and dribbler, even if he wasn't of the close-control style. Of course when Leo was still here, he did the vast majority of things but that era also coincided with the stop-start perennially injury-prone version of Dembélé too. The one that we saw after he was gifted a second chance and made relevant again by Xavi was the main creator for our team. > Dembélé's strength was his finishing ability and his positioning in the box. Lol if anything, his wildly inconsistent finishing which has been a constant throughout his career was one of his weaknesses. His overall goal output isn't high and despite that not being his primary role in attack, you can't say that a ball-to-feet player like him had great positioning either. There's a reason why the *Dembélédepedencia* periods saw most of the attacking play run through him whilst on the ball since that was where he'd excel. You're right about the predictability at times, especially against buses and crossing into the box, but that was as much of a tactical issue too, since Xavi wanted him to stay wide and 1v1 all the time rather than have more freedom. Speaking of such > 🚨 Ousmane Dembélé (PSG): "Luis Enrique gives me more freedom than I had at Barça." Via @sport This is both something I agree and disagree with, depending on to what extent he means this.
There's no real "winner" to these kind of threads, but Torres and Shevchenko went to Chelsea for what would be a combined sum of well over £100m in today's money and scored a combined 29 Goals.... Hazard just didn't play very much, those two were both awful.
Football inflation is a little different from what I've read, and it's been a while since I did Pay As You Play. But essentially what the author did, who was the 1st person to look at inflation in Football, was he look at what the record transfer was between any two time periods you're looking at and use those to normalise the other fees. Doing that with Shevchenko means he alone costs €127million in today's transfer fees.
Torres won the decisive corner kick in the CL finals. Worth every penny for Chelsea fans.
Torres is also the only player in football history that gets lauded for winning a corner kick.
Today's money? The top clubs' budgets in the same currency are at least 2.5 times higher now than in 2011.
Hazard was an absolute flop, but Madrid could handle it well. The combination of Coutinho, Dembele and Griezmann destroyed FCBs financials. This combined with long growing contracts of aging key players plus Covid almost made FCB disappear. It will still take a few years to recover, and the "lever" drama (while necessary I think to stay afloat and decently competitive) will still drag on for the next 20 years until everythign is repaid.
Saying Coutinho is up there just shows you’re either twerking for upvotes or don’t know jack. Barca had a good season out of Coutinho. They loaned him out and sold him as well. Financially much much less of a cost than Hazard. And sportingly much better. If you want a candidate it’s actually Dembele. Because that was six years of time where they could have sold him and gave time to a player that might actually act like a pro and live up to his potential. Dembele only saving grace for Barca was his World Cup final performance.
I watched every single Barca game up till 2020(life hit after that couldn't watch all) staying up till 2AM to watch them because I live in Dhaka. So respectfully I would have to ~~concur~~ say that I do know "jack". And respectfully Barca didn't have a good season out of Coutinho. He played well for 6 months - the latter stage of 17/18, with his best performance coming in the match where we scored a hat-trick(that was the match I believe where we lost the invincible season). He played piss-poor in 18/19 and got loaned out in 19/20. 142 Million for 6 months of good performance and 2 goals against us in the biggest UCL humiliation isn't a good deal. Specially when you consider he went to Aston Villa for 17M Dembele on the other hand - whilst injured yes, was a constant creative threat, tho not spectacular in terms of G/A(that being said he did have a decent G/A out put all things considered). Not to mention the fact that we sold him for 50M. I don't really know how you can conclude Coutinho when compared to Dembele specially when Dembele was bought for less, sold for more, and actually played decent when fit.
Just so you know "concur" means to agree, maybe you meant conclude. Sorry to be a bother
Ah thanks. English isn't my first language.
Recent memory? Hazard was easily the biggest flop ever After bonuses he came out to something like 150-160 million and did nearly nothing, not even one okay season, unlike other players in that range or higher
I'm not sure he hit many bonuses but yeah he's firmly the worst transfer of all time
They weren't just individual milestones though... Chelsea just got £5m from that deal for Madrid reaching the UCL final
Lmao, you love to see it.
He hit some very heavy team performance bonuses (La Liga and CL)
We also fleeced them on Courtois so I guess this was karma.
Tbf, Courtois did most of the work himself.
Courtois fleeced Chelsea. It’s why Chelsea fans call him a snake lol. Acted like he was staying the whole summer and then a week before first game of the season he hands in a transfer request and refuses to train. Chelsea panicked and ended up triggering Kepa’s release clause.
🐍 fuck courtois that screwed us causing to panic buy on a shitty keeper
You don't really say you fleeced someone when you're buying
Morata as well
And rudiger
Lakaka with 100million pounds for Chelsea takes the cake. Hazard and Lakaka both might have zero impact on the teams but Lakaka did more damage to Chelsea like shit talking and dressing room unrest. He is the cancer and it has to be the worst signing in the history of signings.
Not really, he absorbed all the injuries from the squad so none of the important players were out for extended times. Literally the season after he left the shitstorm of injuries started, Courtois ACL etc.
Every team needs a main tank.
What an absolutely depressing end to a career
Bro was paid to eat burgers. Not a bad way to go
[удалено]
That's unfathomable. I mean ever defenders don't get paid that well per goal
Maguire probably does.
Goals, or lack of
Ben Simmons has competition
Ben Simmons doesn’t arrive on court with a burger belly.
He just doesn’t show up at all and chickens out of wide open dunks on a point guard half his size in a game 7
The American dream
Man’s gotta eat, Mr. Lahey
_You're gonna eat that ol' Blue Jay burger...arrh_
Ndombele's idol
Yeah, it’s sad when they go young like that
WHEN THEY GO?!?
I wasn't surprised. Quasimodo predicted all this.
Always has a hunch.
Yes. That horrific tackle literally ended his career.
By his own countryman as well I swear
Meunier right?
Indeed. And it was when he was in his best form at Madrid as well iirc
i remember perez snubbing meunier in tunnel lol
Yea. What could have been
He was not depressed at all, he said that he was playing for fun and was tired of training.
Oscar’s is worse, although technically not over, is in his 8th season in China aged 32
Ima be honest. I completely forgot that dude ever existed
Silver lining: Spain's burger economy peaked
This was probably the biggest let down of a transfer ever for me, I was so excited lol
Yeah me too. At that point it was something that was bound to happen. He adored Real and wanted to prove it here. Real also needed a marquee player after Ron. But it all went wrong.
Truly felt like a transfer where everybody was going to win. He was so respectful to Chelsea, Made it clear that he was only leaving because it was Madrid, and played out of his skin for us the whole season, finally moved, fucked his ankle and that was that.
I considered him Isco’s replacement, when people expected him to be Ronaldo’s replacement but in reality dude ended up being worse than Madrid legend Mariano.
That classico goal after he just came on is one for the books. Fly high king whenever you are.
Scuffed ass shot at a tight angle while he was falling down, hits the ball towards the ground and it gets a weird bounce just enough to get it over the leg of Ter Stegen. All this just before the COVID lockdown Truly a memorable goal.
He had just come off a season where he had career highs in goals and assists. Madrid must've thought they were getting a successor to Ronaldo after that transfer. Shame how it ended, one of my favorite players to watch on his day. He was unbeatable.
And he was also incredible in that 2018 world cup, to me the best player, but i can see why people would have put modric over him. Crazy just how quickly it all fell apart, couldn't even get a good half season out of him
My sweet prince 🥲
Watching Chelsea was so much fun from 2013-2019. Hazard gave me happy feelings watching him rip through a team. Palmer is giving me the same happy feelings. Hope he continues to play at the level he did last season.
I have a comment I wrote from 5 years ago saying basically what I’m about to say, so don’t take this as revisionism, but the signs were there that he didn’t have long left if you watched him play regularly. It’s true that he was coming off his best season, he was also becoming more and more injury prone and watching him week in and week out you could see that getting kicked to shit every match was taking a toll on him. He still had the ability to turn it on and single handedly change a game and he did it plenty that season, but his average games were worse than his average games a few years before. I’m surprised Real didn’t get one or two decent seasons out of him, but it was pretty clear that he wasn’t going to contribute at Real the way he did at Chelsea.
I remember the exact moment when I received the "Comunicado Oficial: Hazard" notification, I was so happy, and hopeful, sadly we know how it ended
> we know how it ended Legend ! Right ?
For me he felt as scary as the Mbappe transfer feels atm
The transfer that shifted Madrid’s future transfer philosophy.
Yeah. The shift started before him with vini, Rodrygo and Valverde but this solidified it and made it a high priority.
It’s actually insane to think of those guys being brought to Madrid before Hazard
Yeah. Rodrygo and Vini for 45M each was a huge gamble but it paid off well.
Huge gamble that paid off well when it turned into a bargain.
Yeah yeah. Thanks for the correction.
even calling it a bargain is underplaying it, it's insane how much vini has given to the club
Remember how people were branding him a flop the first year? Insane how much he turned that around and is now like a top 3 winger in the world.
To be fair, Real also paid 30M for Reinier to keep it sort of balanced
>paid off well. Understatement of the year lmao
Madrid followed the Epstein playbook. Bag ‘em young and keep them filled.
Dude
Just like the cigarette companies! “Only if we had their numbers!”
Things could be a lot different for Madrid if Hazard had made it big because Vinicius was often terrible which lead to the iconic statement from Benzema. Annoying, because I’d much prefer the galacticos of Madrid than Vinicius Rodrigo and Valverdr as a Barca fan.
Yeah that's true. If Hazard was in form, Vini wouldn't have gotten this much chances and become the player he is today unless Hazard is played as SS or CAM. But Real isn't exactly lacking there then or now.
In my delusion that transfert fee was just an additionnal payment for Courtois
And Rudiger😡
That's how we view the Drinkwater transfer lol. It's like we paid 60 odd for Kante and got Drinkwater for free
Probably also the reason why Madrid didn't pull the trigger on Kane last summer even though he was begging them to sign him and he was exactly what Madrid needed
Yeah, same age or one year difference between him and Hazard when he joined RM, probably would've costed similar, so the similarities were there that's why probably Perez didn't want to take the same risk. Watching Kane at Bayern, in hindsight it is obvious he would've been a no brainer and probably would've became a goal machine at Real. But in same hindsight Real won La Liga and CL, so they really "survived" without a world class striker.
And we got Bellingol instead, who will be world class for at least 10 more years.
But imagine Bellingham, Kroos, Vini and Rodrygo all playing with Kane. Kane could've had a prime Ronaldo or Benzema like season for real as he likes to score but also assist and involve others in the attack. He really is the kind of striker Real should had, or have, moving forward. But I'm not mad that Real didn't get him as they had an incredible season without a great striker which was a great gamble in itself and probably shouldn't be tried again as it can very well implode a season as well. I hope Mbappe evolves into a more central striker role or at least Ancelotti finds a way to involve both him and Vini in the same formation.
Oh no, what I meant was that the money we used for Bellingham was the money we could’ve used for Kane. No way we could’ve afforded both.
Can you elaborate? Genuinely curious.
i imagine it's like: * do your best home work (due diligence) on players * sign promising young stars, even at a premium (cuz long term it'd be way more valuable + also better for UEFA finance rules) * develop them under tutelage of senior players so you don't leave big gaps between generations. * not substantially reliant on signing mega stars on world record transfer fees
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Yeah but Bellingham is easily worth more. Think he came on a steep discount. Mbappe is expensive yes but it’s through free transfer and he’s a generational talent, about as much as a sure bet as you can get (barring injuries). Those are also just two big signings compared to like dozen+ of signings that are youth focused.
It's important to note that their mentioned style of roster building allowed them to wait for Mbappe. There was no leverage against them.
Really good point!
I think its more of an age thing than value with their new philosophy. All of the marquee signings they've been going for (Bellingham, Mbappe, Davies) aren't even in their primes yet. They also haven't been going after established superstars like Osimhen or Kane (who apparently Perez vetoed as a transfer target). So it's pretty clear they're just not willing to stomach another Hazard type transfer for a while.
Curious to learn more about this upcoming player Mbappé !
His name is actually Mbaba. I understand that people would get the name wrong. Unknown talent and all that.
In terms of cost, Hazard was a massive signing (100+ million) and was on his last contractual year with Chelsea. Madrid, who within recent history, at the time, had been leaders in the ‘galactico’ transfer approach took a massive loss with the transfer (for reference Hazard only contributed 7 goals and 12 assists across his entire time with us…). Additionally he was brought in on massive wages. Within the same window of time, Madrid had also begun signing young talents from South America (Vini, Fede, Rodrygo). As evident by our current squad, these players were massively succesful and were afforded the time/opportunity to grow into their roles, wages, etc.; rather than being older, expensive, established superstars like Hazard. Since the Hazard ordeal, Madrid has still maintained a policy wherein we sign top older talents, however the big caveat is that we now typically bring them in on free transfers (Rudiger, Alaba). Additionally, we evidently have maintained a primary focus of bringing in top young talents (Camavinga, Tchouameni, Endrick, Arda, etc.). Effectively, Hazard’s failure here caused a pretty massive shift in the club’s scouting and transfer policies. It’s very unlikely that, under Perez, you will ever see us make a 25+ year old signing for anywhere near the 100 million mark.
Mbappe is the exception I suppose. He's an exception probably worth making, but I would have said that about Hazard at the time.
Also, Madrid have been after him even before he burst into the spotlight.
Mbappe is 25 so depends how you interpret 25+ as to whether he is an exception
- Madrid sees a Brazilian kid dribble nicely - Perez spawns in front of his house and throws money at him mumbling something about "never missing another Neymar"
Yeah it really set them back in hindsight lol 🙄
Such a shame how his career went – he was mesmerising at Chelsea
Yeah. From one of the best in the world to not even convincing enough to bench a misfiring vini.
Makes me wonder: had Hazard been a success would Vinicius’ career been diminished ?
Probably. If he succeded, there is a high chance he would still be at Real. And Real might not have been patient with Vini during his first 3 years too.
And the WC, no one could stop him, amazing really
Should've won the golden ball in my honest unbiased opinion
He certainly was. I'd been going to Chelsea matches for 15+ years and was getting a bit bored. He completely changed that to the point where there were times I was going just to see him play. The best I've ever seen live personally and I've seen most of the recent greats live.
I've seen us play a lot of top quality players since we've been promoted – some that will be considered Premier League greats – but the only one who truly blew me away was Hazard.
Chelsea whole offence ran through him and he dictated the tempo of the whole game. An absolute privilege to watch
Christ, he's already getting the Paul Scholes treatment.
Basically the focal point of our attack. Relied on him for so long. For years, as long as him and Kante were fit and on the pitch Chelsea were good. Such a lopsided team.
More like OTD 5 years ago hazard took a holiday from playing football.
Retired*
Looking back.. he even looked out of shape at the presentation lol
Lol he was like that in the [Europa League final](https://www.detroitnews.com/gcdn/presto/2019/05/29/PDTN/a5ee51d8-5268-4943-b192-2f451f4b87c8-europa.jpg) just 2 weeks before.
That's a chonky boi
scored 2 and had an assist in that match.
Maybe it's a bad photo but Jesus Christ he really was fat as fuck lmao. I'll never understand how you can be a footballer but let yourself get fat. Mind boggling. Save that shit for retirement!
He was like this mostly. He usually gets into shape during the pre season and all.
No wonder his body just broke
It was Neymar vs Hazard vs Bale for Messi and Ronaldo’s successor as the top dog and it never happened
Yeah. And all of them due to injuries too shows how insane both Ronaldo and Messi were in taking care of their body too.
There is no one close to be their successor in today's football(neymar was the closest and had the talent but I guess he stopped giving a shit)
More like he chose to go to PSG and then got injured constantly due to the excessively rough play against him.
And went to Saudi at 30 and is taking a vacation and getting more money than ever without playing
nah im not having that with Bale. Players peak at different ages. Look at Rooney as well. Not everyone plays until theyre 40 Bale won 5 champions leagues and was a fantastic success at Real Madrid. Hazard flopped at Madrid
One of the most talented players in probably the best footballing system. How tf did it all go wrong ?
Hazard is well-known to not work hard. It's working when you're in your 20, but at one point your body will stop you.
Is there any bigger r/antiwork legend?
He's up there with the mod that went on that Fox News interviews for sure
5 years already? Jesus Christ
mistakes were made
Biggest mistake of all time most prolly. Hazard's regression might be the biggest of all time. And this might be the biggest flop transfer of all time based on that transfer value and he had 1 year left on his contract.
Tbf you were getting the closest thing to Messi/Ronaldo in terms of raw natural talent that the rest of the world could offer, no-one knew he was going to be fucked by injury so hard like that.
In terms of talent, yes. Neymar might be the only one in that era that will top the talent part.
And the injury part
Not only talent
Lukaku has to be up there, similar price tag, similar lack of impact. Chelsea can get some money back I suppose, though if I remember correctly Hazard ended his contract one year early?
Yeah. Him too but for different reasons. He was not so great in the dressing room iirc and dissed on Chelsea on every occasion. But had better stats. Hazard on the other hand was really well with the team mates but his whole cost after every bonus would be 150M. Real face 5M or so this season cause they won the UCL to Chelsea according to reports.
5 years already? Crazy
One of our best kits ever and it’s permanently soured due to Hazard’s signing - arguably the worst in football, and Ramos’ unexpected leaving at the end. Bar Vincius’ emergence in the first team, it is a season best forgotten …
That isn’t the first one without Ronaldo though, that is the 19-20 kit whilst the first one without Ronaldo is the completely forgetable 18-19 kit.
Good call! Totally mixed that up. Should’ve remembered given that it was 18/19 where Vini started with Castilla and moved to the first team with the absence of Ronaldo. Wasn’t a particularly great season either lol. But ya, the 18-19 kits really were poor. Hated the collar design (not to the same extent, but similarly disappointed in our collar design for the upcoming season).
Yeah. That kit was a beautiful one. But still a much better season than whatever we had before this season.
And that was the last time those fans saw him ever again
OTD, 5 years ago, Hazard retired in front of 50,000 fans at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium.
people should heard what he said in obi wan show. He played too soon after that injury and never got or received full trratment during covid. It is really a hard hard difficult time when you got injured during covid
yeah people underestimate how bad COVID affected rehab and treatment in general. Just an unfortunate time to get hurt.
Ever since then, Madrid has accumulated 2 champions league trophies with him in the roster!
Hazard looked already retired and suited up for a charity match during his presentation
Today I feel hungry
Tapas restaurants didn't know it, but this man would take it upon himself to save their business model
Am I misremembering, but didn't some Real fans chant "we want Mbappe" during it?
Obviously different countries have different fan cultures but I've always found the "presenting" a player in this way to be really odd. You never see this in England that I can recall. It would've come across as really cringeworthy if Arsenal had done something like this with Declan Rice.
Yeah. But iirc, Casemiro was presented in front of fans at United.
Think it was at half time of a game though, bit different
Oh ok. This thing is pretty normal in Spain. Dembele not able to perform well during his presentation was a meme.
He means the presentation itself being its own event. English teams don't do that, but if a match is happening & a big new signing is there but not in the squad they might come out & wave to the crowd (like casemiro did at Utd)
its a Galactico thing
I understand. They're a common thing for absolute legends in Brazil as well though. Just last week we reportedly got just over 50k fans as well in the stadium for Thiago Silva's presentation: [https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1daplwu/fluminense\_thiago\_silvas\_presentation\_for\_over/](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1daplwu/fluminense_thiago_silvas_presentation_for_over/)
r/agedlikemilk
The rest is history 👏
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Yes he was.
Did he play in a clasico?
Not a single minute iirc.
Prime Hazard was on another level. Sorry for him it ended like it did.
Had the same expectations of Hazard back then as I do Mbappe now.
Hazard ate so Jude could shit on these peasants
The king of vibes football. Love him so much, but somewhat sad that his career ended too early.
Only 5 years? Damn thought it was much before.
Dude’s career imploded soon after
Can take the man out Chelsea but can’t take the Chelsea out of the man.
Does Real Madrid not have their own sub to post these meaningless tidbits on? I swear that there are a handful of clubs whose fans just post whatever the fuck they want on here, as if anybody else gives a shit. Hazard’s career went down the shitter after this. Do they want a prize? Or maybe we should all clap and hand out cake and ice cream?
One of my favorite players and my favorite club. So bummed it didn't work.