The 27-year-old missed three matches because of the back injuries and on Thursday evening he made his first start since October 20th with Manchester United. Eden Hazard cannot play a full 90 minutes for Chelsea until after the international break against Tottenham. Hazard played for 62 minutes when Chelsea advanced to Europa League knockout stages with victory at BATE Borisov in Belarus, returning as a replacement last Sunday’s victory over Crystal Palace.
Petr Cech feels that the headgear he was wearing helped to save him from getting seriously injured in the head when he had played the match against Fulham. This was probably brought into context since he suffered a hamstring injury in the recent match that Arsenal played against Watford. Today Petr believes that the trademark helmet he wore when playing against Fulham prevented more injury. This is a precautionary measure he takes up after having suffered a skull fracture that occurred five years back.
There are some media reports that Thibaut Courtois’ agent has urged Chelsea to accept the offer from Real Madrid. It is believed that the player wants to leave Chelsea because of family reasons and that he does not want to stay in London anymore.
The President of Ivory Coast, Alassane Ouattara has declared that his country is ready to host the Africa Cup of Nations tournament in 2021. The first gentleman of the West African country during a media interaction insisted they are fully prepared and are capable of hosting the tournament.
Ouattara equally made it known that they were putting appropriate logistics in place in order to meet and satisfy the requirements. Confederation of African Football (CAF) had earlier announced that the date for African Cup of Nationshas been changed from January and February to June and July, and also the number of participants has been increased from 16 countries to 24 countries.
Cameroon are the next and are ready to host the coming edition of the bi-annual tournament. In an attempt to respond to media speculation that the 2019 hosts may not be ready to accommodate the visitors and cope with the bigger tournament, Ouattara told reporters that his country will have everything in place for 2021 version of the tournament.
“We are very much aware of the decision to increase the number of participating teams and also the change in the usually date, in every situation, Ivory Coast has the necessary infrastructure to host the tournament,” the president said. “Some days ago, we staged the Jeux de la Francophonie with 4,000 athletes from 54 countries. So, Ivory Coast has the infrastructure and in any case, we will continue up to 2021,making available the necessary infrastructure to stage the final tournament.”
The 2021 tournament will be the first time Ivory Coast will have staged African football’s showpiece event since 1984 which is the reason Alassane Ouattara is more convinced his country can do it, as Guinea have already been nominated as the 2023 hosts.
Former Chelsea defender Marcel Desailly says Eden Hazard is not irreplaceable at the club. There are strong indications that the Belgian would exit Stamford Bridge next summer as Real Madrid look to bolster their attacking options.
Hazard, Neymar and a few other elite attacking options have been linked to the Santiago Bernabeu. Coach Zinedine Zidane insists that he would not ask for any player in the winter window. The board can go ahead to sign any player when the window opens but more likely the move would be during the summer before or after the World Cup.
Continue reading