Burnley manager Vincent Kompany pays homage to the former Chelsea player

The manager of Burnley, Vincent Kompany, has paid respect to his former teammate Eden Hazard of Belgium, who recently declared his retirement at the age of thirty-two.

Following his departure from Real Madrid at the end of the previous season, the winger announced his retirement earlier this month.

Hazard, a free agent, had the choice to continue playing, but he made the decision to hang up his boots.

Hazard stated, “You must listen to yourself and say stop at the right time,” in a statement announcing his retirement.

Hazard spent £89 million to join Madrid from Chelsea in 2019, yet he only appeared in 54 league games for the massive Spanish club.

Before then, he had played for 16 years, starting with Lille in France, and had won two Premier League titles while at Stamford Bridge. He also made over 700 games in his career.

In addition, Hazard scored 33 goals during his remarkable 126 caps for Belgium. He would have played several of those games with Kompany as his partner.

“I remember coming into his first training session with the national team, if I remember correctly, it was against Luxembourg but I was injured so the first time I saw him was Norway away in training,” Kompany reminisced about his time spent with the former Chelsea player.

“You wondered, ‘Who is this kid?'” How overconfident he is. He hadn’t shown anything at that point, so you thought going into training that you would “show him a little bit.” Fortunately, it wasn’t me in the first few movements, but when someone else finishes, you realized, “Hold on a second, I need to be aware of this kid.”

After just two or three sessions, I realized this player was unique.

“He acknowledges it himself, but there was a time when he was exactly beneath Messi and Ronaldo in my opinion. Not that it matters, but the best players have exhibited this consistency over a period of ten to fifteen years. It’s most likely the only aspect of his talent that is lacking.

“Yet it’s still a fantastic career, particularly coming from a place like Belgium where we had one of the game’s magicians and we didn’t expect to produce these kinds of players.”