Chelsea legend Eden Hazard has explained why he refused to move to MLS after his disappointing Real Madrid spell.
The former Ajax star struggled with a horror spell with Real Madrid. Recurrent injury crises limited his minutes and saw him play a bit-part role at the club.
If Hazard was not on the bench on matchdays, he was sidelined with one injury or the other. The nightmare four-year stint showed no sign of coming to an end soon.
With a year left on his Los Blancos’ contract, the Belgian chose to take the honorable exit door. At the prime age of 32, he announced his retirement from football.
Meanwhile, reports were linking him to a move to Major League Soccer in the USA as he closed in on the exit door from Santiago Bernabeu.
While the Chelsea legend had a nightmare stint with Real Madrid, it was thought he would choose to stage the last fight to save his career by opening another chapter in the MLS but he shockingly turned down the proposal.
Amidst unanswered queries and speculations on why he turned down a move to the MLS, Hazard has revealed he did not actually mean it when he talked of moving to the MLS.
According to him, deep down, he had made up his mind to leave the sport and not try to make money anymore and lived to ask why he was doing it the next weeks.
Speaking in an interview with Voo Sport World, he said;
“Basically, I said to myself, I’m going to go to America and play two or three years there. MLS isn’t bad. I jokingly told Christian Benteke that I was going to join him in Washington. That way, I play with my guy, I give him a few passes and he scores goals. But it wasn’t just football, we had to move everyone. That’s what slowed me down a little.
“To be honest, I didn’t want to play football anymore. If I really wanted to continue, I would have gone somewhere even if I had to move. But I didn’t need that anymore. I didn’t want to leave just to make money and wonder why I did it two or three weeks later.”
Hazard is currently enjoying his time away from the pitch but has hinted on possibly returning to off-field duties related to the sport someday.
