One of the things that always stood out watching Eden Hazard play for Chelsea was the way the game sounded a bit different when he had the ball. The press seats at Stamford Bridge are low down and right behind the managers’ dugout, a kind of clanky metal pillbox crammed with swiveling press-box heads. From there you can hear most things that happen on the pitch quite clearly, from the clicks and clacks of the ball being passed and trapped; to the familiar deep thunk of David Luiz attempting one of his full-body tackles, those moments where he simply runs right through his man without seeming to realize what he’s doing, like a large, game friendly dog on YouTube confused by the existence of double-glazed patio doors. Hazard would often pop up on that press box touchline, taking the ball on the half-turn and snapping sideways with that astonishing lateral spring, a footballer who just seemed to know a little more about gravity and angles and space. Best of all was the sound when Hazard took the ball. Which was, even that close to the pitch, no sound at all. With Hazard the ball is often silent, so soft is his touch. When the ball went quiet, when the crowd shifted or cooed a little in anticipation – that was when you knew, even deep into some late-night second-half filing nightmare, that it was time to look up. This is of course a prelude to a goodbye. As of this week Hazard really does seem to have played his final game for Chelsea. Then again, it has also been seven years now, seven years during which Hazard has been a relentlessly sublime but also quietly confusing high-end footballer. At moments such as these it is customary to come up with a fittingly hyperbolic farewell, to rank and sort and file and make some claim on a kind of ultimacy. There might be some favorable take on the stats, an angle on goals involvements and key passes that proves unarguably that , yes, your man was indeed the best of the lot. You could probably do it here. But it feels a bit pointless. The real beauty of Hazard seems to slip through the gaps when it comes to the zero-sum game of best, better, No 1. It exists instead in some other category. This is a footballer whose outstanding quality is often aesthetic, sublime in its throwaway moments, whose value comes in what Philip Larkin called the “pleasure principle”. Not that he isn’t also a hard achiever. Hazard can dribble, finish and pass, play as a winger or a playmaker, or simply a roving cutting edge. He signed for Chelsea when they were European champions and is the only man at the club to have maintained that standard of performance ever since. He has been the decisive attacking player in two Premier League title wins. He’s had six managers, has succeeded and stuck in there when Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne were moved on. For all his fine-point touches Hazard has also been a warrior. He leaves the Premier League having been fouled 638 times in the course of making 1,353 dribbles. This season, in a team under pressure, he has been brilliantly consistent. This isn’t his special quality though. It is that jaw-drop factor, the intangibles, that elevate Hazard to the status of most captivating Premier League player of his time. There have always been whispers from his teammates about what he’s capable of doing on the training field. There was a wonderful advertising clip on the internet a while back showing Chelsea players juggling an American football. Willian had a go, managed a few. Someone else shinned it away. Finally Hazard took the pigskin and the day seemed to shift on its axis as he juggled it 20 times, got bored, turned and spanked it 30 meters on to the crossbar while everyone else present fell around, eyes boggled out on stalks. And no, this level of skill doesn’t always show in the basic numbers. This is a player whose own father raised with José Mourinho whether his son may just be too nice to do justice to his high-end talent. In the autumn of 2015 he didn’t score for his club for 23 games. Even within games he can play for a while, stop, snap back, then suddenly enter Full Imperial Hazard mode when the day is there to be taken. This is how football used to be, a little more. Even the most brilliant players would stay at their clubs, would play in spurts, would captivate with their skill and presence; rather than simply racking up the numbers en route to becoming a commodity for the next level. The fascination now is that Hazard is making that shift. If the rumors are true he’s going to the hardest, most unforgiving place in the world. Back in his days at Lille Joe Cole would often compare his dazzlingly skillful young teammate to Lionel Messi. Hazard has not been a Messi, has not been a relentlessly productive creative machine. The challenge is to see whether he really can break on through to that other place, in a Real Madrid team (most likely) that will offer him the platform. Beauty will not be enough. The scrutiny will be thorough and disorientating. Does it really matter either way? Sport is more than this, is also a matter of pure pleasure, the basic joy of watching that balletic level of skill. Whatever happens in Madrid or wherever else, we will always have Stamford Bridge under the lights, and those moments when the game went quiet and seemed to stop.(The Guardian)