Eden Hazard believes the Covid-19 pandemic left him unable to fully recover from an ankle injury which turned his time with Real Madrid into a nightmare.
The Belgian was seen as one of the best players on the planet when Madrid agreed to pay up to €150m to sign him from Chelsea in 2019, shelling out that sum even though the 28-year-old had entered the last 12 months of his contract at Stamford Bridge.
Expected to play a starring role at the Santiago Bernabeu, Hazard’s time in Madrid could hardly have gone worse. He suffered an ankle injury just three months after joining the club and would continue to battle fitness problems until he was released from his contract last summer, at which point Hazard made the decision to retire at the age of 32.
Speaking to former Chelsea teammate John Obi Mikel on The Obi One Podcast, Hazard claimed the pandemic robbed him of the chance to fully heal from the initial injury.
“I think I was a bit unlucky with that period with Covid, because if you want to know the real story, I went to Dallas to do the surgery on my ankle then I came back to Madrid and it was Covid,” he began. “I had two to two-and-a-half months of Covid, me at home alone, no physio to do the rehab. I did my rehab alone. If I had to choose one thing to change I should have said to the doctor, ‘Bring a physio, I need a good rehab’. I have to do [it] because I want to play at the highest level.
“And then when the Covid finished, we came back on the pitch, I pushed my body like crazy but my ankle was not the same and then I break everything the season after and then you know the story.
“If you want me to change one thing it’s call the physio, ‘Come home, I know it’s Covid but please come home, I need rehab’. And things could be different at that time.”
Asked whether he felt Madrid could have helped him more, Hazard defended the Spanish side and suggested everyone was a victim of circumstance.
“At that time people were not allowed to on the street or to go to their job, and I didn’t push the physio or the doctor to…’Oh come on, I need someone’,” he continued. “For me, my rehab, I did a few exercises, a few things alone. For me it was enough, I didn’t think that I had to do more.
“At the beginning, I didn’t think I needed to do more. After two months I think, ‘Oh yeah, I should do more’, but at the beginning I was okay, I did my thing, I go outside running a bit, I do some exercise and it was not that bad, but then I came back on the pitch and I felt it.”
He added: “After that period with Covid we came back on the pitch and we had like two months to play until the end of the season. And we were that close to being champions so I was saying to [manager Zinedine] Zidane, ‘I want to push, I want to go’ and then the day we finished champions I said, ‘No, I can’t do any more, I’m finished, my body is suffering a lot so I need to do a proper rehab’, but it was already the end of the season.”