real Madrid
The Belgian attacker suffers patellar tendinosis in his left knee and will miss the visit to Mallorca and the Club World Cup
Eden Hazard is still in free fall. Real Madrid reported this Saturday that the Belgian attacker suffers from patellar tendinosis in his left knee, which is why he was left out of the squad for the match that his team will play on Sunday against Mallorca, corresponding to the twentieth day of the League. The ‘7’ will not be able to travel to Morocco either, where his team will play the Club World Cup next week.
This is Hazard’s third injury so far this season and the sixteenth he has recorded since he landed at Real Madrid in 2019 with the mission of becoming the new banner of the whites, after Cristiano Ronaldo’s departure a year before heading to Juventus.
A purpose that has been diluted due to the physical fragility of the once brilliant Chelsea winger, whose ordeal began shortly after arriving at Real Madrid with that entry by his compatriot Thomas Meunier during a Champions League match against PSG that sent him to the nursing and has ended up turning him into a shadow of what he was.
Hazard has only participated in seven games so far this season, adding some 328 minutes, which makes him the fourth least used outfield player by Carlo Ancelotti, just ahead of Vallejo, Odriozola and Mariano.
The Italian coach has only started him in three games: one in the Champions League, against Shakhtar in Warsaw; one from the Copa del Rey, against Cacereño, also far from the Santiago Bernabéu; and one more in the League, precisely against Mallorca on matchday five.
That clash against the vermilion box definitely marked him out. Ancelotti turned to the Belgian as a false nine in the absence of Benzema and in view of the good response that he had offered substituting five days earlier for the Lyon striker when he was injured against Celtic in the Champions League, but punctured a bone.
Hazard had scored a goal and provided an assist at Celtic Park, after jumping onto the pitch after the first half hour of a game that Real Madrid won 3-0. He withdrew outlining a smile and hoping that this duel would finally be a turning point in his disappointing journey with the white elastic. Actually, it was a mirage.
Sunset
Hazard’s poor performance against Mallorca was another jug of cold water. Ineffective as a false striker, Ancelotti opted to withdraw him in the 59th minute to give Modric a chance. With the score at 1-1, the Reggiolo coach decided to position Rodrygo as the spearhead and the move was a godsend for a team that completed the comeback largely thanks to the determining impact of the player from São Paulo. In the 72nd minute, Rodrygo broke the Mallorca wall assisting Vinicius and in the 89th minute he sealed the duel with a superb play.
That day Ancelotti definitely put the cross on Hazard. The Belgian has not appeared in the league again and has only dressed short in three other games. The coach gave him 57 minutes against Shakhtar, 14 against Leipzig and 68 against Cacereño.
Nor did he raise his head in the World Cup in Qatar, where Belgium was knocked out in the first round and Hazard ended up relegated to the bench in the last game against Croatia. The three minutes that Roberto Martínez gave him at the end of that match were the last with the ‘red devils’ of a footballer who resigned from the national team after the World Cup and spends his last months at Real Madrid. His contract ends on June 30, 2024 but everything points to the summer departure of a footballer who rubbed shoulders with the best in the world during his stay in the Premier League but whose decline does not seem to have a turning back.
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