Another day, another bout of unsubstantiated claims regarding a player reportedly leaving a club they’re tied into a multi-year contract with. Today it’s Eden Hazard’s turn on the rumour mill, as reports are circulating that the Chelsea midfielder is looking to move to Real Madrid at the end of this season.
The report, which emanates from French publication L’Equipe, suggests that Hazard has already told his teammates that he plans to leave Stamford Bridge in 2016. The reports sources are, of course, unconfirmed, and the only “hard evidence” given to back up these claims is that he liked an Instagram post that featured a reference to the La Liga club. Hardly stone cold proof, is it?
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While the 24-year-old could well be secretly angling to join Madrid, it hardly seems likely that he would do so by first telling all his teammates at Chelsea when he then has to spend the rest of the season playing alongside them, and then going ahead and liking a few Madrid-related posts on Instagram to make the whole issue startlingly obvious to his manager and the club’s owners. And since when have a footballer’s Instagram likes been deemed a legitimate insight into potential transfers in the football world?
In actuality, it seems that this report is more than a little off the mark, and if Hazard does eventually leave Chelsea to make his way to Madrid, it will possibly not have had anything to do with his Instagram activity. Though the midfielder may currently be suffering a poor run of form after lighting up the pitch for his club last year, even being named the Premier League’s Player of the Year, this rumour seems unlikely. Better look next time, “anonymous sources”!
Image Credit: Mike Hewitt / Getty Images
