Ahead of the last-16 first leg between the two teams on Tuesday night Hazard, as has been the case before, has done little to kill off the PSG talk by admitting that “it is hard to say no” to the French club, but Hiddink does not believe Ligue 1 is an attractive home for the world’s best players.
Whether Hazard can currently be classed in that bracket is certainly debatable. He has scored just one goal this season and is no longer a certain starter under Hiddink.
If Nemanja Matic was not suspended, Hazard would almost certainly be on the substitutes’ bench in Paris but the Serb’s ban gives Chelsea’s interim manager the option of starting the Belgian.
“He [Hazard] has a contract that he extended, but first he must now get fit and show he is a top player and then for Chelsea, which is a top club, he can be of huge value,” Hiddink said.
“In the near future, there will be more speculation about who is coming here or who is going but I don’t go into that. PSG have big targets to win the Champions League. Step by step, they have gathered a reputation that they are very serious to be one of the biggest teams in Europe, so this challenge I can understand.
“But it is a different league, they are now 24 points ahead I think. It is not a bad league, but this team is on top of that. For me, I think big, big, big players always like to be in the biggest leagues which are the Premier League and La Liga, and also the Bundesliga.”
Hazard and his team-mates have six days in which to save Chelsea’s season and deliver a trophy that Hiddink would rate as a bigger achievement than simply finishing in the Premier League top four. The club have long since blown their hopes of climbing into the top four but still have the Champions League and FA Cup to play for with the first leg against PSG followed by an FA Cup fifth-round tie against Manchester City on Sunday.
“We have a key week,” Hiddink said. “We desperately desire the chance to go through to the next round of the Champions League, but also we must take into consideration the second game with Manchester City at the weekend so it’s a nice week for Chelsea.
“We need to show that we can continue what we’ve started, step-by-step with a few bigger steps into the spring and, hopefully, we can have a beautiful spring. This week, in the Champions League and FA Cup, is a key week as to whether we go in a nice flow into the next round of the FA Cup, go further in the Champions League or the other scenario is there.
“I came here and the first thing they said was to get us as soon as possible out of this relegation zone, we were just one point away from the zone. I think in a few weeks the team has restored its confidence a bit, getting some better results, and we hope we can continue with that.”
The importance of trying to qualify for next season’s Champions League is obvious for Chelsea, but Hiddink would rather finish the campaign with silverware than fourth place in the Premier League table.
“If you win the Champions League you have a guarantee to get back in,” he said. “This club will always go for silverware [over fourth place], but, on the other hand, we know this year is very complicated for Chelsea. I like to go for silverware because it’s not realistic to think you can get fourth place.”
Asked whether the achievement of winning a trophy is greater than finishing fourth, Hiddink replied: “Yes, of course. Even in this difficult year for Chelsea, if you can achieve that [winning a trophy], it would be an unexpected but huge success.”
Hiddink has, of course, been here before with Chelsea. In his first spell in charge in 2009, the Dutchman managed to win the FA Cup and reached the Champions League semi-finals, where his side endured a controversial defeat against Barcelona on the away-goals rule. “It’s still a bit of a nightmare for me – this [Barcelona] game,” Hiddink said.
“Usually you lose and after one or two days you go on, but this game I thought ‘How is it possible?’ When you see how it happened, then I was having second thoughts.
“If you see what happened with three or four handballs that were not given, then I started to have my second thoughts because it would have again been Manchester United and Chelsea in a final. I had problems with losing in that way.”
- Telegraph