“Eden Hazard Admits to Disliking Playing for Belgium at World Cup 2022”

Eden Haz­ard, the Real Madrid star, has recent­ly shared his rea­sons for not enjoy­ing play­ing for Bel­gium at the 2022 World Cup. Despite cap­tain­ing the Red Dev­ils in Qatar, he made it clear in an inter­view with Bel­gian out­let HLN that he believed the “new gen­er­a­tion” of Bel­gium play­ers deserved to play more. Haz­ard had made just six appear­ances for Real Madrid before the tour­na­ment, and he felt that younger play­ers who were active­ly play­ing for their clubs should have been giv­en more opportunities.

After Bel­gium’s unex­pect­ed elim­i­na­tion from the World Cup group stage, Haz­ard announced his retire­ment from inter­na­tion­al foot­ball. How­ev­er, he clar­i­fied that his deci­sion had been made before the tour­na­ment and was not a result of his coun­try’s failed cam­paign. He revealed that the Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships in 2021 had been a turn­ing point for him, after he was unable to play in the quar­ter-final loss to Italy due to an ankle injury.

Haz­ard also shared that his team­mate at Real Madrid, Toni Kroos, had influ­enced his deci­sion to retire from inter­na­tion­al foot­ball. Kroos had quit the Ger­man nation­al team two years ago, and he sug­gest­ed that tak­ing advan­tage of free time to spend with fam­i­ly was important.

Haz­ard joined Real Madrid from Chelsea in a record-break­ing £88.5million trans­fer almost four years ago. How­ev­er, he has strug­gled to make an impact at the San­ti­a­go Bern­abeu, scor­ing just sev­en goals in 73 appear­ances for Los Blan­cos. Despite this, he remains the high­est-paid play­er at the club.