JUL 14, 2018
Scores the second
goal as Belgium
beat England 2-0
to finish third at
the World Cup.MAY 29, 2019
Scores twice
as Chelsea beat
Arsenal 4-1
in the Europa
League Final.JUN 7, 2019
Agrees a five-year
contract with
Real Madrid.SEP 14, 2019
Makes his Real
Madrid debut as
a 60th-minute sub
in a 3-2 victory
over Levante.Stade Brainois literally at the bottom
of the garden.
Eden was instinctively attracted to
the football venue on his doorstep and
even before reaching school age he
was burrowing through a gap in the
hedge to reach his field of dreams.
He had caught the bug, and from that
moment on he and a ball would be
inseparable partners. He would play
for RSB between the ages of five and
10 before moving to Tubize, a second-
tier outfit with a well-respected academy.
No football aficionado in Braine-le-
Comte was surprised to see Eden on
top of the football pile.
“We rapidly realised that this kid
had something more than the others,”
former RSB director Pascal Demoitiez
told Agence France Presse back in 2016.
“I remember a particular instance in the
mid-1990s when Eden was about six or
seven. We’d just had the pitch reseeded
and to my annoyance I saw a young lad
playing on it. I was going to reprimandhim, to tell him it wasn’t allowed.
“Then I recognised Eden. He was
bare-footed and was systematically
curling the ball into the top corners
of the goal from the edge of the box.
I was amazed by this boy who was just
knee-high to a grasshopper.”
Early in his teens, Hazard would move
to Lille, but he might well have taken
another turning. Anderlecht, Belgium’s
biggest and most prestigious club, were
also pushing hard for his signature and
for a while they thought they were in with
a good chance of landing the prodigy.
Ultimately though, Hazard and his
parents plumped for the cross-border
option. The reasons? The feeling that
youth development was superior in
France, Lille’s educational package- something Anderlecht could not
provide – and Eden’s long-held soft spot
for French World Cup-winning number
10 Zinedine Zidane.
And now, for the next crucial stage of
his career at Real Madrid, the 28-year-
old Hazard will have “Zizou” as a coaching
mentor. Master meet pupil. Get ready for
a meeting of minds.
years to open his goalscoring account
for his country – eventually breaking
his duck with a goal against Kazakhstan
in October 2011 – and he did receive
brickbats a plenty, most of them inferring
that he saved his best displays for Lille.
However, bit by bit, his national-team
stock would improve. Since the beginning
of 2015 he has scored no fewer than 24
goals and he was in scintillating form
at the last World Cup – scoring three,
making two others and voted runner-up
in the player of the tournament poll. He
has also been an excellent captain for
the past four years, initially as a stand-
in for Vincent Kompany, but these days
on a permanent basis.
“Eden is a great skipper, a leader,”
gushed Belgium coach Roberto Martinez
after Hazard’s brilliant performance in the
2-1 win over Brazil in the quarter-finals
of Russia 2018. “He’s a player who is
always true to himself and I love that
attitude. He’s always demanding the ball.”
Hazard’s emergence as one of the top
10 players in the world was no accident.
He does not have a football family tree
- he has a forest.
His father Thierry was a defensive
midfielder in the 1990s for Belgian
second-tier side La Louviere, while his
mother Carine also played the game to
a high standard, operating as an attacker
in the domestic top flight. And each of
his three brothers has shown the same
aptitude for the round ball. Winger
Thorgan, also a full international,
made a big-money switch from Borussia
Monchengladbach to Borussia Dortmund
this summer; Kylian, another wide player,
was on the books of Chelsea prior to
transferring to Cercle Brugge; and the
youngest of the band, 15-year-old Ethan,
is in the Tubize academy and showing
much promise.
Bearing in mind both Hazard parents
were employed as PE teachers, sport
was bound to form a vital part of their
household. The family home in Braine-
le-Comte, a town in southern Belgium,
some 50km from the French border, is
appropriately located in Rue du Stade,
with the ground of local club Royal
Eden Hazard
“He’s a player who never ever doubts
himself. He is never deterred when
something he tries does not come off”
Former Lille coach Rudi Garcia
Real beginning...
making his first
appearance in
La Liga