Chelsea’s Hazard looking to inspire young Belgians

Eden Hazard has been back to his terrorising best this term for Chelsea, and the 25-year-old is hoping he can inspire the next generation of world beaters in his native Belgium.

In Chelsea’s last game before Christmas against Crystal Palace, the 76-cap international completed ten more passes in the attacking third than anyone else on the pitch – with 24 successful out of 28 attempts – and also beat all five of the players he took on.

And while he learned his attacking style of play from watching the likes of Ronaldinho and Robinho as a youngster, Hazard wants his rediscovery of form to encourage young Belgians to play the same way.

“It is natural, I play with instinct,” he said. “I don’t think about I need to do this or I need to do that.

“Once I have the chance to do something, it is instinct it depends on – sometimes I dribble, sometimes I pass the ball.

“It is my way to play. I like to create some problems in the other defence. I like to touch the ball, I like to try to do something and sometimes I do, sometimes not.

“When we were young we watched a lot of video on YouTube and we wanted to watch some clips of Ronaldinho, Robinho, players like that because they liked to dribble, and we wanted to do this.

“Now in the young teams in Belgium, they watch the professionals and we have players like me, Dries Martens who plays for Napoli, Kevin De Bruyne – a lot of small guys with technical ability and we try to teach them this.

“It is like Barcelona, the professional team plays one way and all the youth teams they play the same way.

“So in Belgium it is the same, in the young teams in Belgium we try to do the same as the professionals so we like to have the ball to dribble, we teach them that.”