Jos\u00e9 Mourinho used a short video message to close a chapter and publicly congratulate Eden Hazard after the forward’s induction into the Premier League Hall of Fame. Mourinho, who returned for a second spell at Chelsea in 2013, made clear there was no lingering animosity.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese coach had long been open about his admiration for Hazard, even joking in prematch team meetings by writing opposition stars off as \u201cno Maradona, no Messi, no Hazard.\u201d The relationship between manager and player, however, was tested across three seasons.<\/p>\n
As Hazard recalled on a podcast with his former Chelsea teammate John Obi Mikel last year, \u201cThe first two seasons [with Mourinho], amazing. Remember the first year, the team was new so it was just the beginning. Then the second season of Jos\u00e9 we won the league and we won the League Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen the third season was like starting problems, we lost games and at the end the relationship went away a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hazard\u2019s form dipped sharply in 2015\u201316. By the time he scored his first Premier League goal of the season in April, Mourinho had been out of a job for four months. There had been debate over the player\u2019s best position, with a push for a more central role floated by Hazard, and Mourinho was ultimately sacked in December 2015 as his defending champions hovered just above the relegation zone.<\/p>\n
A decade on, Mourinho bore no ill will. In the video he said, \u201cEden, many congratulations on joining the Premier League Hall of Fame. Everybody knows that you belong there. You are one of the most amazing players that I ever worked with and of course you have to be there.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are in the Hall of Fame so now you stay in our memories\u2014and by the way thank you so much for helping to win my last Premier League title!\u201d<\/p>\n
Hazard reflected on his induction and career in his own words: \u201cFor a small Belgian guy from Braine-le-Comte just playing football for fun, being inducted into the Premier League Hall of Fame with these great players at 34 years old is incredible,\u201d and \u201cMy dream was to play at the highest level and I did it, so I am really happy. Week after week, you have big games, and at the end of the season you lift a trophy with your teammates. It\u2019s a beautiful feeling.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you score goals, when you win trophies, you just want more. I am proud to know I did a few good things for seven years in the Premier League.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mourinho praised Hazard after his Hall of Fame induction recalling shared success and past tensions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1191,1192],"class_list":["post-4121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-eden-hazard","tag-hall-of-fame"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}