Eden Hazard: Landing Lille Star Will Keep Chelsea Relevant in Champions League

The Chelsea Blues have a lot of rebuilding to do, and on Monday they made a huge step in the right direction.

According to Eden Hazard’s Twitter account, he is signing with the champs:

"

I'm signing for the champion's league winner.

— Eden hazard (@hazardeden10) May 28, 2012"

What a few weeks it has been for the Blues.

After shocking the world by beating Bayern Munich to become the first London-based club to win the UEFA Championship, the cold realization sunk in that their core was going to disband.

Now they have gained a player who registered 20 goals and 16 assists this past season in 38 matches for Ligue 1. He had an 81.9-percent success rate on passes and was Man of the Match on 14 separate occasions, according to whoscored.com.

At the ripe age of 21, he is the future of this team, and the Belgium native will keep the Blues in the news for a long time.

This is a good thing, considering the tremendous losses the club has endured since winning the championship just over a week ago. Finals hero Didier Drogba and fellow starters Salomon Kalou and Jose Bosingwa are gone, and the club had to make a splash.

Consider Hazard to be that proverbial splash.

After finishing only sixth in the league, the Blues went on an incredible run against all odds just to ensure they could qualify for next season. After losing three top talents, landing a player with the abilities of Hazard was the move they had to make.

The Blues knew as much, which is why they are going to shell out an awfully large amount of dough for Hazard. While a formal announcement has yet to be released, Lille had previously said they were looking to let him go for roughly €33 million ($41.4 million).

Completely worth the money.

The Blues aren’t going to be the favorites next year, but today’s announcement is a huge step in the right direction to ensure they don’t completely fall off a cliff next season. 

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