Chelsea v Barcelona: Champions League tie gives Eden Hazard the chance to finally step up to the European elite
It was the Champions League that persuaded Eden Hazard to join Chelsea in the first place.
Early in the summer of 2012, when the Belgian had the pick of Europe’s leading clubs, it was Chelsea’s triumph in Europe’s top club competition that tipped the balance in their favour.
“When they won the Champions League, I told myself: ‘Why not Chelsea?’” a 21-year-old Hazard explained shortly after announcing to the world via Twitter that “I’m joining the Champions League winner”.
Before their dramatic final victory against Bayern Munich in Bavaria, Hazard would have watched Chelsea overcome Barcelona — a side they had serially sparred with in the preceding years — in the semi-finals.
Six years on, with the two sides set to meet again in the last 16 on Tuesday, there have been few results or campaigns that have lived up to the European promise Hazard may have seen in the club when he chose to make the move.
I’m signing for the champion’s league winner.— Eden hazard (@hazardeden10) May 28, 2012
In his first season at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea became the first defending champions to fail to make it past the group stage. The following year, 2013-14, Chelsea reached the semi-finals, where they were knocked out by Atletico Madrid.
A round earlier they had overcome Paris Saint-Germain on away goals, which remains their sole knock-out tie win over a major European power in Hazard’s time at the club.
In 2014-15 and again in 2015-16 PSG dumped Chelsea out at the last 16 stage, while last year the Blues sat out following a 10th-placed finish a season earlier.
Yet if Hazard has any disappointment with Chelsea’s European endeavours since arriving at the club, those results have been mirrored by his own output in the competition.
Read more: Champions League – Are Premier League clubs on the cusp of a European renaissance?
The 27-year-old has scored just eight goals and made 10 assists in 36 Champions League appearances for Chelsea. In knock-out games his record is: played nine, scored two — both penalties — and assisted none.
When Chelsea secured a stunning second-leg comeback against PSG in 2013-14, Hazard was watching from the stands having been taken off injured just 18 minutes into the game.
And it was his two defensive lapses against Atletico Madrid — with no attacking input to make up for it — that cost Chelsea in the semi-finals the same year.
In 2016, Hazard was substituted in both legs against PSG and even booed off by some sections of the Stamford Bridge crowd.
Hazard was subbed off and booed by some fans while Chelsea were chasing their 2016 tie against PSG (Source: Getty)
No player has better reflected the Premier League’s travails in Europe in recent years. Hazard has been named in four out of five PFA Teams of the Year since he has been in England — winning Player of the Year in 2014-15 — but has struggled to transplant that form into the Champions League.
The tournament has largely been dominated by teams with players who relentlessly produce goals and assists regardless of opposition or occasion in recent seasons. Think Arjen Robben, Robert Lewandowski, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — all finalists since 2012 who have scored more than 15 goals in the knockout stage of the competition.
Player
Champions League goals for Chelsea since 2012-13
Eden Hazard
8
Oscar
8
Willian
8
Fernando Torres
7
Own-goal
7
Ramires
4
Gary Cahill
4
“I’m a human being, not a machine,” said Hazard at the time. Unfortunately for him and Chelsea, the Champions League has been a machine’s tournament in recent years and new models now appear to have emerged in Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and Tottenham’s Harry Kane, both of whom impressed in their first taste of the competition’s business end last week.
By contrast Hazard, while a supremely gifted and capable player, fluctuates in form. In the 2015-16 season Hazard went 30 games, 273 days and 2,357 minutes without scoring, an almost unthinkable proposition to any of those named above.
The good news for Chelsea is that Hazard is in form, with three goals in his last two Premier League games, and has sparkled already in the tournament against both Roma and Atletico Madrid.
If he can replicate that against Barcelona this week Hazard can — for one tie at least — give Chelsea back a measure of the European status they held when he joined.