Exclusive - Frank Lampard on why Eden Hazard could still become of the game's greats

There will soon be a vacancy on the top plinth of the football podium and Eden Hazard is rapidly running out of time to realise his dream of claiming the ultimate accolade in the game.
When Hazard turned down offers to join Manchester United and Arsenal and sealed a move to Chelsea in the summer of 2012, the hype surrounding this Belgian prodigy suggested the Blues had won the race to sign the game’s next great icon.

Yet while he has shown bursts of brilliance during his six seasons in the Premier League, Hazard has not come close to touching the kind of levels served up by Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Barcelona’s Lionel Messi on a weekly basis.

With 72 goals in 252 appearances for Chelsea, Hazard’s flashes of inspiration do not qualify him for consideration as a potential successor to Ronaldo and Messi as the game’s greatest player and if he is going to change that image, he needs to do it now.

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At the age of 26, Hazard has to lead Chelsea to Champions League glory if he is to assume what some believed would be his place as one of the greats of his era.

Delivering such extravagant levels of individual brilliance is what the true greats of the game can do, but Chelsea’s No.10 has shown little evidence that he is ready to join the game’s elite list of champions.

To this point, Hazard has been a luxury player who has been excused regular dips in form, but that narrative needs to change if this footballer is to become more that what he already is. This is the season when Hazard has to shine and in the opinion of one of his former team-mates, the fantasy of him being recongnised as the best player in the world may still be within reach.

Frank Lampard played alongside some of the giants of the game during his record-breaking spell as Chelsea’s midfield talisman, so these words resonate when they come from one of the giants of the Premier League generation.

“For me, Eden Hazard is the most gifted player I played with and there is no reason why he cannot go on to become one of the true greats,” Lampard told Yahoo Sport an exclusive interview.

“John Terry and Didier Drogba were the best players I had the fortune to play alongside at Chelsea, but in terms of pure ability, Hazard was the best.

“There is no limit to how far he can go. Can he get to the levels of Messi and Ronaldo? I think he can, but he needs to add consistency to be recognised alongside those kind of players.

“What we saw from Hazard last season was a different mentality. He showed maturity with his movement and got himself into more effective positions more often.

“That’s why he was clearly the best player in the Premier League last season and Chelsea ran away with the title, but now he needs to do that again this season and take it on to the next level.

“You see Messi and Ronaldo scoring hat-tricks every other week and while it might be harder to do that in the Premier League, you want to see those kind of performances from Hazard.

“Messi and Ronaldo are both in their 30s and cannot go on forever, so if you are looking for a player who could step into the void they will leave behind at the top of the game, Eden has to be in the mix.”

Few players are worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as the Barcelona talisman, but Hazard has been one of the few nominated as his possible successor.

Despite the best efforts of the chasing pack, the standards set by Messi and Ronaldo remain several steps ahead of their rivals, with both of these enduring champions confirming their powers are not waning yet in the Champions League in recent days.

Ronaldo took his record breaking goals tally in Europe’s top competition to 107 with two more in Real Madrid’s comfortable win over APOEL Nicosia last Tuesday, with Messi’s magic powers showing no sign of waning as he bagged a stunning hat-trick against Juventus 24 hours later.

The statistic that Hazard has a mere five Champions League goals in his career and has yet to break the 20-goal barrier in a Premier League season further evidence of his moderate achievements.

Hazard’s primary function in the Chelsea team may not be to score goals, but the reason why Messi and Ronaldo have put themselves in a different bracket compared to all their rivals is their stunning goal per game ratio.

Paris Saint-Germain’s €222m forward Neymar also plays in a wide attacking role, but he is in a different league to Chelsea’s occasional match winner. Meanwhile, Neymar’s new PSG team-mate Kylian Mbappe, Atletico Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann and even Tottenham forward Harry Kane are have higher price tags than Hazard in the inflated transfer market.

Hazard has hinted that he may be forced to leave Chelsea and play for one of the giants of European football if he is to realise his stated ambition of being hailed as the best player in the world.

Amid persistent rumours that Real Madrid covet his signature, maybe the Hazard legend can still be built if he confirms his class at Chelsea this season and then shines for Belgium at next summer’s World Cup finals, but don’t hold your breath.

The bar of expectation may have been set a little too high for this maverick at the start of his career, as the truth may be that this quietly spoken match-winner was never quite cut out to be the superstar in a league of his own.

Being on football’s B-list is hardly failure for Hazard, but he has only one last chance to confirm he has what it takes to elevate himself to top tier status.

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