Who was better at his peak: Sadio Mane or Eden Hazard?
That’s the question many football fans are asking now that it looks like both players have banked their Premier League stats, production and records.
Hazard looks set to continue at Real Madrid after bidding farewell to the English shores in 2019 and Mane is now just a confirmation tweet away from being ratified as a Bayern Munich player.
Mane vs. Hazard
And while there is still a chance that one or both legendary wingers will one day return to the English top flight, chances are their bounties will have overtaken them by then.
In that case, so be it, as we were lucky enough to see Hazard and Mane grace the Premier League with what will already be considered the zenith of their star-studded careers.
Now all is well, but we have to go back to our original question because Mane’s departure to Anfield has drawn him into the Hazard debate that Mohamed Salah knows all too well.
We and the fans just can’t resist comparing the best players from time to time and we couldn’t help but dig a little deeper after seeing the back and forth on social media.
Also, in theory at least, we are now set for life when it comes to the Mane vs Hazard debate in the Premier League and so there has never been a better time than now to extract their stats.
And we tend to find that the most interesting way to calculate the number of two world-class stars is to look at how they paired during their aforementioned bounties.
Compare their main stats
Interestingly too, there’s good reason to believe Hazard and Mane both peaked in the 2018/19 season, which is where we’ll turn to try and find out who boasted the best stats in their splendor.
Although, yes, Hazard may have won the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award in 2014/15, we’re inclined to think it was his final year at Stamford Bridge that actually saw his best performances. .
He may not have won the Premier League title like he did four years ago, but he has produced both more goals and more assists in this campaign to land a transfer to Real Madrid.
And as for Mane, it’s a pretty straightforward selection as he won the Premier League Golden Boot and the Champions League title to earn himself a fourth-place Ballon d’Or.
But who was the best? Well, let’s find out by using the Premier League website’s official player comparison tool to compare stats between Mane and Hazard’s main seasons – check it out:
Put some respect on the Mane name.
Mane holds on
It might just be us, but sometimes it feels like the Senegalese winger gets lost in the mix of legendary Premier League wingers because he’s so often compared unfavorably to Salah.
As such, many fans will have expected Hazard to roll Mane at his peak, but that’s just not the case with the two players back and forth in a titanic statistical battle.
Hazard has never scored as many Premier League goals in a season as Mane did in 2018/19, although he is going wild in the assists charts by scoring 14 more goals on a plate than rivals Liverpool.
The Chelsea icon is holding strong in attacking data despite also scoring fewer goals, and enjoys some sort of demolition work in the squad play rankings with an array of fabulous passing stats.
But Mane was still dispossessed less often and provided more balls, before reasserting himself in the defensive stats with more tackles, interceptions, clean sheets and more.
All in all, you might say Prime Hazard pretty much sneaks around with a fuller set of data – give or take his clear defensive weaknesses – but the fact that you can discuss him anyway says a lot.
Hazard is one of the most technically gifted players the Premier League has ever seen, so Mane taking on his best talent shows how much he will be missed in English football.
News Now – Sports News