Former Chelsea attacker Eden Hazard has been labelled the “laziest footballer” by one of his former teammates at Stamford Bridge.
The Belgium international signed for Chelsea in 2012 for around £32m from Ligue 1 side Lille.
Hazard’s form dipped at different stages but he was largely a brilliant asset for Chelsea and he has established himself as a club legend.
He left Chelsea in 2019 to join La Liga giants Real Madrid for a fee of around £85m.
This move has been a bit of a disaster for everyone involved as Hazard has been severely impacted by injuries over the past few seasons.
Hazard has only played 73 times for Real Madrid across all competitions since the start of the 2019/20 campaign. This includes just seven outings this term.
The attacker has come under fire in recent seasons over his fitness issues and some have argued that he has been overweight at times.
Now former Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel has recalled that Hazard was a terrible trainer during his time at the club.
“Everybody wants to be in the starting XI come the weekend and there is no place for you to be like ‘I don’t want to train today’. The only player I saw do that and get away with it was Eden Hazard,” Mikel told Dubai Eye.
“He never trained. The worst. The laziest footballer I have ever seen in my life. But then come the weekend he produces and was man of the match. He comes in then and was like ‘come on guys you see’.”
Mikel added: “I actually think when you look at him now he has lost a lot of weight.
“But when he was at Chelsea the night before a game after dinner, he sits there for like 20 minutes, half an hour, eating rice pudding. He likes his food.
“Then he goes to bed, wakes up on a Saturday morning and is there, he produces. We just let him do whatever he wants.”
Mikel has also spoken out on Mo Salah and Kevin De Bruyne’s woes during their time at Chelsea.
Hazard was poor at the World Cup last year as Belgium exited the competition at the group stages.
Speaking before the tournament got underway, then-Belgium boss Roberto Martinez claimed that it is a “lazy comment” to suggest that Hazard is “carrying too much body fat”.
“Eden Hazard can have bad games and can have moments when he’s not at his best. People say it’s because of his body shape or he’s carrying too much body fat,” Martinez said.
He added: “If he doesn’t play well then the easy comment, the lazy comment, is that he’s not as thin or athletic as he should be. I think that’s an irrelevant comment.”
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