When he wants to explain the development leaps in their own careers tend Frank Lampard pull a tale from the time when he had just started working with Jose Mourinho.
It was the pre-season camp in the United States, the summer of 2004. Lampard had a successful European Championships and a couple of good Premier League seasons behind him, but still had not jumped in the last elite when he sauntered out of the shower after training.
On the way into the locker room intercepted Lampard of a resolute Jose Mourinho who stared him straight in the eye.
– You’re the best player in the world.
When a helnaken Lampard curled a little embarrassed wearing Mourinho repeated the same message with much greater force and emphasis.
– You’re the best player in the world.
At first felt Lampard’s mostly just uncomfortable while Mourinho developed its reasoning, but a while after he had managed to fuss out the call came, he found himself a new feeling in the body.
– He had lifted me up to a new level, and I felt a massive wave of confidence. The rest of the day I walked on clouds. It’s not often you can say with conviction that another person has changed your life, but I know that it is so with Jose Mourinho.
The first summer Eden Hazard and José Mourinho worked together meant far from the same immediate bromance .
The initial training matches were played against the loosely assembled all-star teams from Thailand and Malaysia, and it would be an exaggeration to say that Eden Hazard played focused. He floated best around and showed, overworked situations and took wrong decisions half on purpose.
His new coach was not particularly impressed.
– He killed me a couple of times with his eyes and I thought, “Okay, this is where Mourinho-style”. When he looks you in the eye, you feel like a target, and it’s not a good feeling.
Did the stick rather than the carrot
Sometimes it works the carrot, other times needed whip. A 22-year-old Eden Hazard was no Frank Lampard – a hyper professional training product that was rather too hard on yourself – without a child prodigy who got used to slip past obstacles rather than climbing over them.
From the beginning he did not like Mourinho’s type of player.
– He has incredible natural talent, and when you receive such a gift, you can not waste it. I want more responsibility, greater ambitions. The kid will get better and better, make a mark on the field in game after game. Not upside down – always on top.
And so one of those characteristic Mourinho-gestures.
– That’s what I want. If I can get I do not know.
As a nine year old persuaded Eden Hazard his parents to take him to the French national team’s uploading camp ahead of Euro 2000, just half an hour away from their home.
Zidane -tröjan as Hazard went there was just a cheap copy, but the feeling he came home with was true in the highest degree. In the days that followed, he did virtually nothing other than practicing various Zidane-feints.
It was also in this way, Eden Hazard created their own football education. At first he was inspired by videos on Ronaldinho, Riquelme or Robinho, since he taught himself to master the tricks.
Nothing unusual about that, but Hazard was blessed with an acceleration and a ball treatment that did so he could play around all the way into professional football. Football remained a game for him, even in environments where it was something very serious for everyone else.
During breakthrough years in Lille he himself admitted that his first priority was to entertain the audience with arts, while the notion that the win games came in second place. When he moved to Chelsea, he talked about the importance of not adapt, but rather continue playing as if he were at home in the garden behind the family home.
Eden Hazard was the guy who went out and took a hamburger outside arena when he was exchanged in an international, even though the game was still going on. He was spolingen who missed the Chelsea training since he took AWOL, gone back to Lille over the weekend and then lost passport.
Not that he meant no harm, but mostly because he did not think that everything have to be so damn seriously just all the time.
In the meeting with Jose Mourinho emerged a mentality crash, which culminated in the defeat to Atletico Madrid in last year’s Champions League semi.
Eden Hazard was pissed that it was boring to play, Jose Mourinho was pissed that the team knocked out of the tournament. Players moaned at the coach, coach criticized the players.
– He’s not the kind of player who is willing to sacrifice himself to 100 percent of their team and for his friends. He is not mentally ready to look after their left-back, to live his life for him.
Presses players into world-class
Player Development can look in several different ways, operate on several levels .
There’s the coach who specializes in making promising juniors to skilled senior players. They include not Jose Mourinho.
He has barely used the academy players at all during his
He was absolutely crucial for Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and John Terry, and he contributed to the refinement of Cristiano Ronaldo , Wesley Sneijder and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Each process has been unique, each player has had his own tailor-made special treatment.
father of two children at 21
The key to Eden Hazard was harder than others to find. At first it felt Mourinho that he does not really reached, that he did not exchange he got used to get.
In his eyes appeared Hazard first as a child of his time, an egocentric exhibitionist from what Belgian press calls “Generation Vuitton”. Over time, he realized, however, that he allowed himself to be fooled by first impressions.
Eden Hazard childhood was one long family reunion. The house full of little brothers, next to the bustling district of grandparents and aunts and cousins in a single Belgian Bullerby mess. He himself has had the same girlfriend since he was 14 years old, and became the father of two children already at 21. More than anything else, his life revolves around his family.
– It is the cornerstone of my happiness. Without my family I am nothing.
This was something that Jose Mourinho both could relate to and use of their leadership. He began to emphasize the importance of Eden Hazard thought of the team as a family, that he actually had an obligation to take responsibility for the group and its prosperity.
– Actually Eden stands out very much in today’s context. Why? Because he is humble, friendly, polite. Selfish? The zero. Selfish? The zero. I have worked with top players for 30 years, and he’s not from this time. He comes from the old times.
Mourinho made sure to get to know the whole family Hazard. When it was made career decisions around Eden or younger brother Thorgan he discussed with their father before he talked to the players themselves.
– His dad said something I loved, “I have a wonderful son, who is a wonderful father and husband. I want him to change – because I want him to become a great player too – but I do not want him to change so much. I want him to remain the same son of the same father, the husband – just with a little more perseverance and a little more mental aggressiveness, a little bigger ego and a little bigger ambitions. You are the man to give it to him. “
” From Another World “
After the title pusher against Manchester United last weekend talked Branislav Ivanovic Eden Hazard on the finest way a football player can describe a teammate. He was referring to a go-to guy, such as the team can rely on when they really need something.
– Sometimes he is so impressive that he seems to come from another world. For me he is the guy we just need to give the ball to, and then he does the rest.
Right through the last year, Jose Mourinho continued pressing the same buttons. You know the guy sitting next to you in the locker room? He is your brother – and he needs you, he depends on you. It is your duty to help him.
The effect has been extreme. Eden Hazard think more consciously, try harder, playing with a totally different intensity and smoothness.
– He realized there was a gap between his talent and his accomplishments, and now he sees his football and his profession with different eyes. He trains a lot better, concentrate better and have developed very much tactically. Now he understood how he should do his qualities available for the team, and how he should hide their weaknesses.
Sometimes the risk one to cut players to become a smoothed player, but Jose Mourinho has no these kinds fears Eden Hazard .
– There is never a problem to become more complete. Just because you are working with a computer does not need your handwriting become rotten. He did not lose their spontaneity, their creativity and their joy, but he won other things.
To have the potential to become one of the world’s best player is one thing, to actually realize it is quite another. Eden Hazard has taken the leap now. When Jose Mourinho hits his dad next time he can say that he has done exactly what he was asked to do.
– Eden is by far the best player in the Premier League. He’s still just a kid, but he is at the same time also one of the world’s top three players. As a family man, he knows that it entails responsibility. Now he manages to handle that responsibility.
Source: Het Nieuwsblad, Le Soir, Sud Presse, Le Parisien, France Football, L’Equipe, The Telegraph, The Independent, the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror
* Arsenal Chelsea 17.00 at Viasat Football
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