Hazard hasn’t won Jose over as a perfect 10

JOSE MOURINHO still believes that Eden Hazard has to improve if he is to become a perfect 10 such as Deco and Wesley Sneijder.

The player of the year for 2014-15 revealed last week that he had spoken to the Chelsea manager about playing in his favoured No 10 position to help revitalise his own form and the team.

And Hazard has played better since occupying the central role, which has now translated into an overall team improvement in the last two games, which Chelsea have won.

But Mourinho revealed he is yet to be convinced that the role behind the striker is Hazard’s natural position and that he suspects he will never have the impact of Sneijder and Deco in that position.

‘We have different concepts of No 10, me and him,’ Mourinho said of Hazard.

‘For me a No 10 does a lot of things, with the ball and without the ball. So for me a No 10 is a very special player in my team. In my first period here we played without a 10, we played two No 8s. With a system of two midfield players and a 10, I demand a lot from No 10.

‘Every position is important but it is an important position. I like a No 10 to score goals. I like a No 10 to get in the box. I like a No 10 to score a goal like Oscar did against Maccabi.

‘A No 10 for me is an eight-and-a-half when the team lose the ball, and the No 10 is a nine-and-a-half when the team have the ball. Wesley Sneijder and Deco were the best I had. Ozil was very good.’

Asked whether Hazard could be that kind of No 10, Mourinho said: ‘I don’t think so.’

Mourinho has also revealed that Chelsea’s awful start to the season, which has seen them lose seven league games in 13, has changed his outlook on life. ‘I learn how to live without the happiness of winning matches,’ he said. ‘I learn how to motivate myself without the target of being champion, which is not easy for somebody who always had the happiness of winning matches very regularly, and somebody who always played, with the exception of Uniao de Leiria (the second club he coached in Portugal), with the objective to be champion.

‘I think I am a better manager because I accumulate experiences. And I analyse experiences. And I learn with experiences.

‘Every exercise I do on the pitch, I learn with the feedback, I learn with the direction of the exercise, every match, every decision, every defeat, every victory, every goal we score, every goal we concede. I think I learn.

‘Being manager is the kind of job where you become better and better and better and better until the day you decide to stop.

‘It’s not the kind of job where, like a player, there is a certain moment where you go down because of physical reasons or motivational reasons or whatever. This is a job where the accumulation of the experiences makes you always better.’