Eden Hazard underwent surgery this Tuesday at the La Zarzuela University Hospital in Madrid, where Dr. José Palacios removed the metal plate that had been implanted two years ago to stabilize the fracture he suffered in the lower part of the fibula, in the right ankle.
The intervention, which has lasted half an hour, has been a success, according to the statement published by the club on its official website, which details that the footballer was already at his house this Tuesday afternoon.
He moved there after receiving a visit from the president of Madrid, Florentino Pérez, at the hospital.
After a couple of days of rest at home, the rehabilitation will begin in Valdebebas.
The time needed for him to be able to play again is difficult to specify, but club sources estimate that it could range between 30 and 45 days.
If he finally needed the maximum of that range, a month and a half, he would be ready to return on May 13, with two league games ahead of him and, if Madrid had advanced, the Champions League final, scheduled for May 28, still to be disputed.
At the end of the operation, Hazard was in high spirits, according to club sources, who say that he is convinced that, after freeing himself from the plate screwed to his fibula since 2020, he will finally be able to take flight.
The Belgian attacker already wanted it removed a year ago, but Madrid's medical services concluded that it was not the most recommended option.
However, Hazard has suffered uncomfortable sensations and insecurities in his right ankle since the osteosynthesis piece was installed in February 2020, fixed to the bone with a set of screws.
After the intervention, he chained one muscular injury after another, while trying to recover his form.
And when he managed to return to the field, he always moved between doubts about the state of the ankle, with discomfort due to the metal piece.
The piece had been implanted in the Darrel clinic in Dallas by Dr. Eugene Curry, an expert in ankle injuries, and orthopedic consultant for the Dallas Cowboys, of the NFL, and the Mavericks, of the NBA.
It was the second major attempt to repair the mishap that has so far cut short his career at Real Madrid, Meunier's entry on November 26, 2019 in the Real Madrid-PSG Champions League match at the Bernabéu.
After the first examinations, the doctors believed that it had only been a blow, but as the days went by, and given the persistence of the pain, more tests were carried out, which ended up finding an external periomalleolar microcrack, in the outside the ankle.
Hazard spent 82 days out, playing 73 minutes against Celta and 67 against Levante at the Ciutat de València, on February 22, 2020.
This time the treatment was different.
The player flew to Dallas, and there he was operated on by Dr. Curry.
He then began a recovery process that suffered two major setbacks.
The first, the confinement due to the pandemic decreed in mid-March.
The second, the contagion of coronavirus from the physiotherapist who came to his house to treat him and who had to stop the rehabilitation work.
The Belgian returned to play in the final stretch of that coronavirus league that Madrid took in July 2020. But since Meunier's injury he has never played at the level that led Florentino Pérez to hire him.
Eden Hazard has only been able to participate in 65 games in the three seasons he has been at Real Madrid, in which he has scored six goals and ten assists in the 3,318 minutes he has spent on the pitch.
This Tuesday was the third operation on the right ankle of Hazard, 31, after the one in 2020 and the one they performed for another fracture in June 2017, when he was a Chelsea player.
That time he was injured in training with the Belgium team: he twisted his ankle in a shot on goal.
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