Why Eden Hazard Is Just as Important to Chelsea as N'Golo Kante

January 1, 2015: Jose Mourinho is at the end of his tether. Exasperated by a lack of protection afforded to Eden Hazard, the Chelsea manager vociferously decries opposition players getting away with targeting his talisman. The Belgian is the best player in the Premier League and its most fouled.

March 13, 2017: Antonio Conte is at the end of his tether. Exasperated by a lack of protection afforded to Eden Hazard the Chelsea manager vociferously decries opposition players getting away with targeting his talisman. The Belgian is the best player in the Premier League and its most fouled.

Life is nothing if not cyclical.

Hazard never stopped being kicked, but he did stop being the best. Last season when the Belgium international's hip became Mourinho's Achilles' heel, he was grouped with Chelsea's other conscientious objectors in refusing to go to war for his manager. The former Lille OSC man needed a big campaign; it has duly been delivered.

On Monday after his Chelsea side knocked Manchester United out of the FA Cup, Conte said, per BBC Sport: "In 20, 25 minutes for Hazard, it was impossible for him to play football. I see only that he got a lot of kicks. He started receiving kicks and finished receiving kicks. This tactic, to play by going to kick the opponent, does not exist. It's not football for me."

Back in 2015, Mourinho said, per the Guardian: "The way match to match he's being punished by opponents and not protected by referees, maybe one day we won't have Eden Hazard. It's one, two, three, four, five, 10 aggressive fouls against him. They kick and kick and kick, and the kid resists. He's a very honest guy in the way he plays, but that's another problem."

That final line is classic Mourinho. At the time he was particularly incensed by a challenge on Hazard that he thought should have earned then-Tottenham Hotspur defender Federico Fazio a red card. The Belgian told him it wasn't a foul.

It reminds of the exchange in The Godfather when Al Pacino's character, Michael Corleone, informs his father, Vito, that he doesn't want to succeed him in the family business. Same blood, cut from different cloth.

Mourinho played by Marlon Brando would be quite the thing, and probably a casting choice that would delight the Manchester United manager. In the end, Michael proved no less hardnosed than Vito. An angel with a dirty face has always been the type of player Mourinho favours, too.

Maybe he sensed a similar change in Hazard when on Monday he seemed to hold him accountable for getting Ander Herrera sent off. On the touchline Mourinho and Conte faced off. Two alpha males sparring as Hazard looked on coquettishly with eyes that said, "Boys, you really shouldn't be fighting over me. But I like it."

It was as gloriously entertaining as it was unedifying. The machismo on show couldn't have been any camper had the fourth official who intervened been Kenneth Williams. 

There can be no greater compliment to Hazard than the way Mourinho set his side up. Eschewing a generic off-the-shelf formation, the Red Devils morphed in a 6-2-2 whenever they weren't in possession, which was frequently. United's entire game plan was tailored to stifle Hazard—to browbeat Chelsea's heartbeat. Muzzles restricted none of the Portuguese's hounds on the night.

Given the pair have history, this was the equivalent of Hazard finding out his former manager still stalks his Facebook page daily.

Whenever Hazard picked up possession, it generated a visceral thrill in the viewer of desperately wanting a fox to escape its pursuers. Mourinho on horseback as master of hounds sounded his horn from the first minute and the hunt was on. It's a wonder he wasn't wearing a red jacket and jodhpurs.

Rotational fouling was reintroduced into English football with an abandon not seen since the 1970s. This was Leeds United defender Norman Hunter chasing an opposition winger around the pitch, before he passed the assassination job on to Johnny Giles, who in turn gave it to Billy Bremner, before Allan Clarke had a pop. Manchester United's kit man is probably still finding pieces of Hazard when cleaning the players' boots.

Traditionally in mob rule it's hard to pin the blame on a single perpetrator. Herrera must have felt like the kid in the 2011 London riots who got banged up after being caught on camera taking a bottle of water in the lootings, while all around him the capital burned.

Referee Michael Oliver gave an idiosyncratic interpretation of the rules when he decided the next Manchester United player to go within a ball's length of Hazard would be booked, after Phil Jones had spent the opening stages manhandling him with all the finesse of a drunk trying to commandeer a bicycle.

Herrera may have become the first player to receive a booking for accumulative fouls that weren't his own, but Oliver's motivations came from a sound place. The referee is after all the guardian of rules that were being stretched all the way back to Manchester. 

With the exception of Lionel Messi, it would be risible to compare the dribbling ability of any player to Diego Maradona. Hazard, though, is as close as it gets in the Premier League. With a low centre of gravity and piston calves, it's almost impossible to shift him off the ball. Rumour has it he's blood-type concrete.

His first half turn just over the halfway line that confused Chris Smalling to the point he looked as though he had just inhaled a vat of mescaline and needed a David De Gea tip wide on the stretch to keep the scores level, was the type of moment that can make even the most jaded fall just a little bit back in love with the game. Any piece of skill that makes you involuntarily squeal like a trod-on pig is a rarity to be treasured—and made into a GIF. 

Hazard has been squealing more than any other player this season. He has been fouled 75 times in the Premier League alone. By the very nature of the game, players who dribble are always the likeliest to be fouled.

No one is lighting a candle for Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha, who has chewed grass on 72 occasions, but for context it's worth noting how Sadio Mane (50), Raheem Sterling (47) and Alexis Sanchez (43) have all been illegally impeded considerably less.

Conte argues Hazard is being targeted. On the flip side, at least referees appear to be recognizing the fact. This is, of course, the number of fouls given, not necessarily the number of fouls committed. Even so, surely a lower number would be even harder to accept?

Talking about a player such as Hazard in terms of numbers is a little like standing in front of a great painting with a Pantone colour chart, but it would be remiss not to give Monday's roll call: 99 per cent pass accuracy, 98 touches, 72 passes, seven dribbles, six times fouled, three shots.

Some United supporters accused Hazard of milking the situation. All of which seems a little harsh given he barely reacted to Marcos Rojo definitely not stamping on him in the second half. Instead he wore the mildly irritated look of a man who has held the door open for a group of tourists and not received a solitary thanks.

"I don't see the point in reacting," Hazard told The Independent (h/t the Daily Mail), in 2015. "True, it's a human response but it is the way I have been brought up. I have been used to taking the knocks. The more I take, the happier I am.

"It always makes me want to outdo them but in a football way and I don't want to make their life a misery by kicking them. I want to hurt the opponent but in terms of the football."

Maybe Arsene Wenger isn't the Premier League's only masochist after all.

After the game, it was the indefatigable match-winner N'Golo Kante who again received the majority of the plaudits. His mismatch with Paul Pogba pitted arguably the most feted midfielder in the Premier League against its most derided.

Pogba is a big man to fit in a pocket. Kante may be the size of a gnome, but somehow he managed it. He was as phenomenal against United as he is most weeks, as omnipresent as Pogba was invisible.

Much has been made of the point swings experienced by Leicester City and Chelsea since Kante swapped clubs over the summer, and rightly so. Chelsea are 30 points and 10 places better off than at the same stage last season, while Leicester are 14 places and 29 points down. Still even the most devout Kante disciple—and there are many—might balk at the idea he's personally responsible for an accumulative 59-point swing.

There's a certain irony in that the ultimate team player is being singled out so exhaustively for individual praise. Maybe on the sly Kante is intercepting compliments meant for his team-mates before they leave the mouths of pundits and fingers of journalists.

Praise is not finite. It's possible to offer it without having to take it away from someone else first. A propensity in football to frame everything in a way that means there has to be a loser means collective celebration is less prevalent than caustic criticism. Chelsea shouldn't be all about Kante.

Just as tangible an explanation for Chelsea's upturn is the form of Hazard. In 2014/15 he was named PFA Player of the Year after scoring 14 goals and assisting a further nine in 38 Premier League matches. The Blues proved worthy champions.

When Hazard's form inexplicably dipped last season (he scored only six goals, none of which came before Mourinho was sacked) in what was a malaise that admittedly afflicted pretty much every player in the Portuguese's final campaign in charge, Chelsea were wretched. Tenth place flattered them.

With 11 goals and four assists to date, along with 120 completed take-ons and 54 chances created, this season's output is almost certain to be rewarded with a second title in three seasons for Chelsea and Hazard.

It has been argued that such is Kante's influence whoever signed him over the summer would have won this season's title. There's a case Hazard would improve any of the top six to the extent he similarly could have turned them from also-rans into champions.

In 2014/15, when Hazard was named Player of the Year, it was the 26-year-old who so often proved the match-winner in big games.

When, in the second half of the campaign, Chelsea's title pursuit became a war of attrition, as impeccable standards set in the first part of the season seemed to weigh heavy on minds and legs, it was Hazard his team-mates most often turned to for something different. He's a big-game player and enjoys the glare of the spotlight. Retreating to the shadows to take cover, like Mesut Ozil is prone to do, is never an option.

Collectively, Chelsea look stronger than they did back then. Enough of Conte's players are in good enough form to ensure they will likely win the title at a canter. Hazard doesn't need to carry this team on his back, but if he did, one suspects the most diminutive of frames could pull it off.

Still, it's worth reiterating how after his own mini-lull at the turn of the year, Hazard is back to his imperious best.

A 3-5-2 formation fits Hazard like a bespoke suit. Conte was not wrong when over the summer he likened his role to that of a tailor, per BBC Sport. He's balked at Italian stereotypes in being a coach more interested in what his forwards do with the ball than without it. Hazard's predilection to switch off in defensive situations, that so irked Mourinho, is no longer such of an issue under Conte.

The width provided by Chelsea's buccaneering full-backs allows Hazard to move inside and operate in the no man's land between an opposition's defence and midfield. He is relishing the freedom and has rewarded his coach's faith.

A slaloming goal against Arsenal when he ran from over halfway and made Francis Coquelin look like a child trying to dispossess an over-competitive father in the garden, is arguably the best individual effort scored this season. Likewise, Hazard's opener against West Ham United, in which he impudently finished off a glorious counter-attack, is right up there with the finest team goals. Chelsea following the path of least resistance to score a goal of dazzling simplicity sums up Conte's side to a tee.

Sometimes in the noble pursuit of casting a little light on the underappreciated—which inexplicably some still think Kante is—it's easy to become if not blind then certainly complacent towards things of more obvious natural beauty. A B-side inherently becomes more interesting than the A-side; a young underground author is more intriguing than an old dead one. Esoteric pastimes trump anything with a queue. 

Football's no different. We live in the age of the greatest footballer to have played the game, and yet through the nature of repetitive consumption, watching acts of genius from Messi have for many become as predictable as toast in the morning. If he scores a goal in training, the whole world has seen it before it hits the back of the net.

From Bangkok to Barnsley via Berlin, it would be possible to watch every Messi touch between now and the end of his career—without leaving the sofa. Everything is instant. Everything is accessible. In some ways it's great, but it's also a little sad that the football world has shrunk to the size of a Twitter feed. Anticipation at seeing something talked about but rarely seen no longer exists.

For a young mind, seeing the European Cup-winning Red Star Belgrade side of 1991 for the first time was like how Michael Caine must have felt on spotting the mythical Zulus encroaching on Rorke's Drift. Impossibly exotic, replete with a strip to die for. Darko Pancev was as sharp as any spear. Young fans now would know more about Red Star than opposition managers did then.

We see passages of wonderful play so often, from all levels of the game, they often invoke as much deja vu as wonder. Thus we find new ways to appreciate the game. A relentless presser like Kante becomes as spellbinding as a dribbler like Hazard.

Which in a roundabout way might at least partially explain why Hazard can play as he did against Manchester United, yet Kante was named man of the match. He is also odds-on favourite to be named PFA Player of the Year ahead of his team-mate.

There's little doubt the endearing Kante would be as popular a winner as there has been in recent times. Without any question, he's been the best buy of the season for the second year running. He's the best in the Premier League at winning the ball back, the best interceptor of a football since the Minnesota Vikings' Paul Krause and covers more ground than any other player.

But in effusively praising the groundwork he puts in to allow his team-mates to paint mini-masterpieces in front of him, let's not forget what is manifest as a consequence. The fragments of beauty among the industry are just as deserving of celebration.

Hazard would be as worthy a recipient of the Player of the Year gong as Kante.

Even better, maybe they could share it.

All stats sourced from WhoScored.com unless otherwise stated.