Chelsea winger Eden Hazard has said that the final days under former manager Jose Mourinho at Stamford Bridge were unpleasant
Mourinho won a Premier League title and a League Cup in his second stint at Chelsea but results quickly started to dwindle in his third season with the club after they lost 9 of their first 16 Premier League matches.
Hazard said that the team went into a negative spiral in their third season under the Portuguese manager and that he felt that training was no longer fun.
“The last season under Mourinho was not pleasant anymore,” Hazard told HLN. “We did not win, we got into a sort of routine-training-training without having fun. It was better for all parties that the collaboration came to an end. But if you ask me one trainer with whom I want to work again, I say: Mourinho,” said the Belgian
“If the results are less, he starts criticizing his players – you know that. But afterwards I was able to post that; it is part of his character. If you want to, Mourinho is the best trainer you can imagine.
“Then he is a friend of yours – you can do what you want (laughs). Want one day off, he gives you two. If things are going well, Mourinho will experience football like me: comfortable. Even his own image of an extremely defensive coach was not too bad. He is far from adventurous like Guardiola, but the year in which we became champions, we have made many goals and played good games.
“(I think) I did not regret many things in my career, but I did not have to work with Mourinho at Chelsea anymore. We had a team to get a lot of prizes, but we just ended up in a negative spiral.”
Hazard scored four goals in 31 games during the 2015/16 season, his lowest goal tally during his time with the club, and the Belgian said that his sub-par form was partly his own fault.
“In those twelve years of professional career, I have had one bad year – the last six months under Mourinho,” added Hazard.
“And it was still partly my own fault. We had requested extra holidays from Mourinho after the title. I got totally out of shape at the start of the season. I remembered this lesson this summer – four weeks after the World Cup I was back on training in Chelsea.”
