"I don't know," the Italian said at yesterday's press conference ahead of tonight's EFL Trophy semi-final second leg at Stamford Bridge. "At this moment he is more an individual player than a leader. He’s very important of course as he’s a great player and he can always win the match in two minutes, sometimes in one minute, but at the moment he’s not a leader. He’s a great player, one of the best in the world."
Now, with Hazard arguably one of the best players in the world, if not at least in England, and with speculation about him moving to Real Madrid continuing to swirl about like the snow flurries outside my window, you might say that Sarri is taking an even bigger risk by drawing any negative focus on the Belgian. Clearly, though, Sarri knew what he was saying, why he was saying it, and when he was saying it.
"I think we need to react on the pitch, all the rest is nothing," Sarri had said earlier in the presser when asked about how his team will respond to his criticism of the team after their dismal defeat to Arsenal last weekend. "We need to discuss our problems. The first step, if I want to improve, is to accept the mistake otherwise its impossible to improve. It’s a normal discussion for improving." But, in talking about the kind of reaction he's looking for, the question of leadership emerged. "It depends on the atmosphere around the players," he said, "but we have some players with the characteristics to be a leader, such as Azpilicueta, David Luiz, so I think they can help all the other players to get the right mentality."
Hazard can be a confounding figure. There's no doubting his brilliance, but sometimes it can be dimmed, either because his box of tricks gets stifled by defenders, or by the player himself dropping down a couple of gears. Sarri, and Antonio Conte before him, should share some of the blame in this. Playing Hazard as a false 9 is clearly not what the player wants to do and, equally clearly, when he's played as a target man when there's little dropping in for him, it would be understandable for Hazard to get frustrated. But is that necessarily a leadership issue? When Chelsea had a spine of leadership - Čech, Terry, Lampard, Drogba - the authority and effect was tangible. Today, it's patchy. Azpiliqueta is a great defender and a worthy captain, but he's no John Terry. Likewise, David Luiz has passion aplenty, and when he's not making silly mistakes, evokes some of the blood-and-thunder JT used to exude. But there is something lacking throughout the current team. Jorginho was brought to Chelsea by Sarri to act as his lieutenant, but his influence in the holding role has faded of late, and with the manager stubbornly refusing to rotate his No.5 (ideally by playing Kante there), the midfielder has offered little in the way of being the engine room.
So what, then, is Sarri's expectations of Hazard? And why has he chosen to rattle the Belgian's status just as Chelsea are hoping he will shun Real Madrid's interest and sign a new contract? Obviously, reverse psychology can't be ruled out, but again, it seems an extremely high-risk strategy where Hazard, precariously poised over a new deal, is concerned. Perhaps, though, "leadership" was the wrong choice of words. Perhaps Sarri was getting at something else. Earlier this week Hazard made an alarming admission to France Football magazine, saying that he's been a source of frustration to his past managers...and will continue to be so. "I didn’t just frustrate Conte," he said. "In my career, I’ve frustrated all my coaches. And with Sarri, once again, I frustrate him. They think that I need to mark more, do more of this and more of that. And the next coach that I have, I’ll frustrate him as well."
Hazard is, however, a consummate wind-up. His ambiguity over his Chelsea future has been conveyed playfully, with a trademark twinkle in his eye suggesting that the witty and bright Hazard is just messing around half the time. Probably only he and his agent knows where he wants to go, or even where he will actually end up. Which brings me to tonight's game against Tottenham. If Sarri wants to get a reaction out of any one player with this fixture, Hazard is probably the player to poke with a sharp stick.
Hazard, you’ll remember, was in the thick of it two years ago when Spurs blew their Premier League title chances at Stamford Bridge. "We don't want Tottenham to win the Premier League; the fans, the club and the players," he said before the ill-tempered 2-2 draw in May 2016 that ended Spurs' hopes of preventing Leicester City from winning the league title. Hazard's stunning 83rd-minute strike brought the scores level...and led to temperatures boiling over. So, with Sarri looking for a reaction, both from the Arsenal defeat but even from the painful 3-1 loss to Spurs in the league in November, a defeat that ended Chelsea's 12-game unbeaten run, it's possible that the Italian coach is engaging in some mind games with his mercurial Belgian.
Quite how Hazard will react remains to be seen. If, tonight, Hazard is again played out of preferred position in the false 9 role, he may well continue to go through the motions. Without the newly-signed loanee Gonzalo Higuain, and with Álvaro Morata seemingly on his way back to Spain, if Sarri chose to start with Olivier Giroud up front and have Hazard play in from the left, his preferred position, he might just get the positive response he's looking for. But, as has now been well documented, Sarri's reluctance to try something as adventurous might mean that, until Higuain can be integrated, Hazard might stay, unhappily, in the middle, and now with his own coach questioning his seniority, too. Not good, really...
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