We often talk about injury prone players and how their bodies start to let them down, but should we also be looking at how they are treated and wonder if some players should get more protection?
It’s common for opposing players to leave a few heavy challenges on a talented opponent early in the game and the refs will rarely punish it, so it led to videos like this where Jose Mourinho predicted the injury troubles that would face Eden Hazard later in his career:
José Mourinho was more spot on in this video with each passing day ? pic.twitter.com/xiY4pFHqIH
— Alex Goldberg (@AlexGoldberg_) February 3, 2021
It was announced today that he was expected to miss another four weeks at least for Real Madrid after he picked up another injury, so it looks like Mourinho was correct after all.
It’s not clear exactly when this video is from but it appears to be when they were at Chelsea together, and it does make you wonder if things would be different if he was protected more on the pitch.