PETE JENSON: Eden Hazard has the chance to ignite his Real Madrid career against Chelsea

There is a theory being whispered around Real Madrid’s vast Valdebebas training complex that Eden Hazard has been fit for a while now and has been held back for the two games that could completely change his career in the Spanish capital.

It’s true the 30-year-old Belgian international has been training with team-mates for the last two weeks. 

It might be a stretch to say they could have played him against Liverpool but were saving him for his former club, but there does seem to be a sense that his return to fitness this time has been precision timed – no risk taken, and always with the carrot of facing Chelsea giving him an extra mental push.

He ought to get minutes against Thomas Tuchel’s team on Tuesday and maybe even a start back where he played the best football of his career next week. 

‘A tirar!’ said Zinedine Zidane in his Monday press conference. The sentiment was ‘let him loose’ and there was a theatrical wave of the hand as he said it. Hazard is back, just in time. 

‘He has no doubts,’ Zidane said, referring to the all-important frame of mind of a player who has been injured for so long.

‘He looked good on the pitch on Saturday. He had no reaction and now he can move forward. He is going to bring a lot to the team.’

Zidane is right. Hazard did look good. On a miserable Madrid night with rain sweeping in across the tiny and unprotected Alfredo Di Stefano stadium he skipped about, barely getting wet. 

He looked trim and completely untroubled by his recent injury record. Few imagined he would be called upon in such conditions but Zidane had no doubts and – perhaps with the contrast made even more stark by his brilliant white kit against those of the players around him on such a muddy night – he did look like a level above everything else on the pitch.

He will be the first to know that standing-out in the same way against Chelsea, especially if he’s asked to perform from the start – having only played 410 minutes in the league this season and only being involved in barely a third of matches overall – will be much tougher.

It’s been another hugely frustrating year. But for all that he has missed 19 league games, which is more than any other Real Madrid player, it still stands that the club have little option but to be patient with him.

They cannot sell him in the current market and with the Super League bonanza of JP Morgan cash injection no longer a reality there will almost certainly be no big summer signing. 

Hazard has to be the player Madrid fans get excited about, just as he was supposed to be last summer when the consensus was – his first season was a write-off but watch him go now.

How Zidane uses him against Chelsea will depend on the circumstances of the game. The away goal rule demands caution in the first home leg. 

It looks like being Nacho at left back in the continued absence of Ferland Mendy, with Raphael Varane partnering Militao, and Dani Carvajal completing the back four. Luca Modric and Toni Kroos will flank Casemiro in midfield, with Marco Asensio and Vinicius asked to play either side of Karim Benzema up-front. Those two will also work back to make a midfield five when Madrid don’t have the ball.

Hazard could replace Asensio or Vinicius in the second half although that runs the risk of him not offering the same defensive coverage as the player he replaces. 

It is at Stamford Bridge where he has maybe a better chance of playing a more leading role. Zidane still thinks like a player and he will be aware of the psychological pull of a game on familiar territory where Hazard could rewrite the miserable narrative of the last 22 months, with just one Champions League semi-final display.