EDEN HAZARD finally left Chelsea after proving once and for all he was just too good for the club.
Too good for most clubs, in reality – arguably even his new employers, Real Madrid.
Los Blancos struggled mightily last season in the absence of Cristiano Ronaldo, ending 2018-19 with a last-16 Champions League KO and 19 points adrift of Barcelona in La Liga.
Meanwhile, Hazard was easily one of the best players in the Premier League, if not the world, finishing with a Premier League-high 15 assists, while scoring 16 times.
It was the best season of his career, statistically at least – and he bagged his well-deserved dream move in a deal worth up to £150million.
But Hazard will not become a flashy, fame-hungry Galactico… that's never been his style.
He's the humble Galactico, a down-to-earth hero – and a man who actually wore jeans to his own private wedding.
In 2012, the Belgian star, 28, married childhood sweetheart Natacha – whom he met while at school aged just 14.
OUT OF THE SPOTLIGHT
And so keen were Hazard and his bride-to-be to avoid the glossy magazines, they wed in secret at a registry office – giving the media a false date for their big day.
You won’t find him out at nightclubs with models like other Premier League stars – or top players from any of Europe's Big Five leagues, to be precise.
Despite earning £400,000-a-week at Real, Eden is much happier going to Disneyland with Natacha and their two young children, Yannis, eight, and Leo, aged six.
Hazard doesn’t have his own website and he certainly doesn’t have a Cristiano Ronaldo-esque clothes range.
And while he has been more willing to help out with advertising campaigns in recent years, it's fair to say he keeps a much lower profile than your Paul Pogba-types.
Superstar Eden inherited his anti-flash attitude from his parents, it would seem.
When he turned up in an expensive new car to visit his home town of Braine-le-Comte, dad Thierry told him to ditch it.
His former youth team coach in Braine, Jose Authom, told SunSport: "Thierry told him to leave his new car in Lille and use the family car in Braine.
“He did not condone that sort of conspicuous behaviour in his little town.
“Thierry was not like so many of these other football fathers, meddlesome and quarrelsome and always lurking in the background blaming coaches and club representatives for any mishap or dent in their sons’ careers.
“He let us do the work. I remember his son Eden went to him to complain about some training he hadn’t liked. Thierry told him off.”
For a while it looked like Hazard was going to be another petulant, spoilt footballer.
During a game for the Belgium national team in 2011 he was substituted after just an hour on the pitch.
Ignoring the normal protocol of joining his team mates on the bench, he got dressed and went to have a burger with his family with the game still being played.
The incident became known as Burgergate in Belgium.
Then shortly after joining Chelsea in 2012 for £32m from French side Lille, Eden caused outrage by kicking a Swansea ball-boy in the ribs while trying to retrieve the ball.
The police asked 17-year-old Charlie Morgan if he wanted them to take criminal action against Eden, but the youngster accepted the player’s apology.
And when he returned, Chelsea’s manager Jose Mourinho questioned whether Eden was giving his all to the side.
But these incidents appeared to only set Hazard on the straight and narrow as he has gone on to be not only one of the best players in the world, but also the model professional.
Keeping Eden’s feet on the ground is his wife Natacha.
Shortly after getting together in school they were parted because Eden moved from Belgium to join Lille’s youth set up in France at the age of 14.
They met again less than a year later and once Natacha had left school aged 18 they moved in together in Lille.
Last year Eden said he would quit the Premier league if his wife said she wanted to move to Paris.
Marie Armand, who helps to look after the business side of the Eden project, said: “Eden devotes the little time that’s left to him outside of football to what he loves most.
“His priority is his wife Natacha and his two sons Yannis and Leo.”
The other source of Eden’s single minded dedication to football is his family.
Both his mum, Carine, and dad Thierry, were players and all of his three younger brothers have shown talent on the pitch.
Carine gave up playing for Belgian women’s league side Manage when she fell pregnant with Eden.
Eden has said: “I was in her stomach when she was playing. She was three months pregnant. I take after my mum as a player.
“My dad played at the back, chilled out, calm on the ball. My mum was a striker.”
Dad Thierry used to be a midfielder for La Louviere, a now-defunct top division team in Belgium.
Later he joined the much smaller Royal Stade Brainois side, where Eden started his career in the youth side aged five.
Eden's brothers Thorgan and Kylian are also pro footballers – with the former currently plying his trade at Borussia Monchengladbach and the latter at Cercle Brugge.
Both were once on the books of Chelsea.
On his family, Hazard once joked: “We could have a great five-a-side team.”
Family first, football second – that's Hazard's mantra. And it's fair to say it seems to be working.
As the Belgian star prepares to begin his new life in Spain, it's hard to see him not thriving with such a strong support network to go with his flawless attitude.
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