Mourinho tells strange story of Hazard's injury and subsequent substitution

Watching the incident unfold live on television, it seemed quite straightforward.  Jamie Vardy kneed Hazard in the side or the hip and Eden, after trying to play on for a second, couldn't quite continue.  Pedro came on to replace him and Hazard was whisked away down the tunnel by the Chelsea medical team.

But to more than just a few observers, Hazard seemed to, shall we say, give up (?) too easily.  Wouldn't be the first time Hazard's carefree attitudes were questioned.  The challenge from Vardy didn't really look that strong either, though looks can be deceiving.  And if it was just a dead leg, surely Hazard could've walked it off.

Mourinho's post-match comments related this conundrum, though they fell short of appeasing any growing rumors of this episode being an indication of some greater strife going on behind the scenes.

"I don't know, the only thing I know is that in ten seconds, he made a decision himself. [...] So it must be a serious injury because he just left the pitch and made a decision that he was not in a condition to go in, so it must be something important."

"His first reaction was "I can't" and I was going to make a change, his second reaction was I want to try and when he goes on to the pitch, first step and immediately says I can't do it. So it was him, that in a few seconds had three different perspectives but clearly, he couldn't do it."

We could see some of Mourinho's frustration at this bit of indecision in replays.  But the manager, at least in public, is obviously fully accepting of Hazard's injury being very real and severe enough to not have been able to continue.

"No no no, he's injured, clearly. During the game I have no time to understand what is going on. I will have time now, to understand where the injury was, but clearly he tried and he felt immediately that no way."

This is probably not the last time we get to deal with this story.  Stay tuned.