The reason why Hazard was “discarded” by Barcelona

Club gave up on signing Belgian striker due to his attitude

Eden Hazard was close to joining Barcelona when he was playing for Lille , however the signing was rejected, thanks to the content of a report revealed by Bojan Krkic, father of Bojan Krkic, current football coordinator for the Catalans.

“I met Eden Hazard at the Under-17 European Championship. At that time, Belgium and Spain were superior. They reached the final and Spain won, but Hazard played wonderfully throughout the tournament, except in the final,” he explained on the programme Què t’hi jugues’ on radio SER Catalunya.

“I went to see him in a game in Montpellier. The two teams went to warm up in August, in very hot weather, and Lille were missing a player . A minute later, Hazard came on the pitch. The whole team went to warm up and he did the opposite. Everyone was stretching and he was looking at the stands. As for the game, he played well, but I didn’t like the level of commitment and attitude,” he recalled.

A similar attitude in a later game only reinforced the conviction that he was not a player to advise Barcelona : «In the report I put ‘discarded’… These types of footballers, who are very good, showed me, both when they were my teammates and as a scout for Barça, that they don’t deliver results. I discarded him for that reason, not because of his quality.»

Hazard would leave France to join Chelsea in 2012/13 and after seven seasons at Stamford Bridge he would head to Real Madrid , the last club he represented, before hanging up his boots in 2023, aged 32.