Midfielder John Mikel Obi tell-it-all on British radio sports program
By Rasheed Adewuyi
Former Super Eagles midfielder John Obi Mikel has revealed that Real Madrid midfielder Eden Hazard is the laziest player he played with all through his football career.
Obi and Hazard were teammates at Chelsea FC, where Obi spent eleven years at Stanford Bridge, while Hazard featured for the Blues for seven.
Speaking on Talk Sports a British sports program, Mike explained that there’s no place for a player to say I don’t want to train and get away with it, but Eden Hazard would not train with his teammates and still come up with brilliant performances on match days.
“I’ve never seen his kind before in my life,” he confessed.
“He is the laziest footballer I’ve ever seen in my life. Because of his lukewarm attitude to trainings, he would stand on a spot and ask his teammates to pass him the ball, but in most cases, we always ignore him because we want him to work hard too.
“We just allowed him do whatever he likes because on match days, he would come to the dressing room with the Man of the Match trophy and say hey guys, I’ve done it again.”
After featuring in over 190 appearances and scoring 50 goals for Lille FC in France, Hazard signed for English club Chelsea FC in June 2012.
The 21-year-old Lille playmaker joined the then newly crowned European champions for £32m on a five‑year deal worth £100,000 a week after tax.
He quickly became a key player for Chelsea, helping the team win the Europa League in his first season, and the Premier league title in both 2014/25 and 2016/17. He was considered a Chelsea legend, scoring 110 goals in 352 appearances for the Blues.
Hazard has also won two La Liga titles and one Champions league trophy with his current club Real Madrid FC in Spain.
Three years ago, Eden Hazard made his big-money move to dream club Real Madrid and it began to unravel for the Belgian talisman.
On arrival at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, Hazard struggled with fitness for games due to too many injuries which denied him consistency in La Liga games and Spanish football appearances.
Between August 2019 to November 2021, the Hazard missed 68 appearances for Real Madrid because of different musculature ailments, transfermarkt.co.in claimed.
This poor form pushed Hazard down the starting roster under manager Zinedine Zidane (2019-2021), who turned to Vinicius Jr to fill Los Blanco’s left-wing position.
The coming of Carlo Ancelotti, has even transformed Vinicius into a well polished performer which further removed Hazard from the regular discussions at the Bernabeu.
