Jean-Michel Vandamme is considered as the man who discovered Eden Hazard. The 63-year-old returned to Lille as the director of the youth academy a few months ago, the club where he has spent most of his career -- including 40 years as a coach as well as several years working in various positions within the youth setup. In 2005, he was charged with integrating a 14-year-old Eden Hazard into the Los Mastines training system and has followed the Belgian midfielder’s development throughout his career. As such, it’s safe to say he knows the player better than most. In 2011, at just 20 years old, Hazard, along with several other of his Lille academy peers, was part of the team that secured the club’s first league title since 1954. Lille went on to lift last season’s Ligue 1 trophy, although with a very different-looking team to the one that scooped the title in 2011. "That [2011] team had 50 percent homegrown players. Now we have won another Ligue 1, but there was hardly anyone from the
Having to leave Barcelona was a moment of great upheaval for Lionel Messi, but the Argentina forward saida few familiar faces have been helping him to settle at Paris Saint-Germain. The 34-year-old, who started his professional career with Barça and is their all-time record scorer with 672 goals, joined PSG on a two-year deal in the pre-season after being told by the Catalan club they could not afford to keep him. "I came back to Barcelona (from the Copa América in July) to prepare for the season, after taking advantage of the extra days of vacation that the coach (Ronald Koeman) had given me," Messi told France Football in an interview released on Saturday. "I had in mind to sign my contract and to start training right away. I thought that everything was settled and that all that was missing was my signature (on the contract). But when I arrived in Barcelona, I was told that it was no longer possible, that I could not stay and that I had to find another cl