Chelsea v Tottenham: Perfect 10s Hazard and Eriksen take centre stage

Amid the noise, colour and passion of an all-London Wembley occasion pitting the two best teams in England against one another, expect two men to cut coolly through the cacophony.

Antonio Conte’s refined and clinical Chelsea lead Mauricio Pochettino’s vibrant Tottenham by four points at the top of the Premier League and the two sides meeting in an FA Cup semi-final marks an intriguing break in the plot.

Four players apiece from each club were named in the PFA Premier League Team of the Year this week, underlining neither are short of men who have excelled this term, but their lofty positions owe much to a pair of mercurial playmakers

Eden Hazard is firmly in the running to scoop his second PFA Player of the Year award in three years. The Belgium international has been liberated to wreak havoc by Conte’s 3-4-2-1 system and has plundered 14 top-flight goals, alongside five assists.

At Tottenham, Christian Eriksen is responsible for the same amount of Premier League goals – 12 assists outweighing seven the Denmark international has netted himself.

Eriksen has 11 goals and an astonishing 18 assists across all competitions, with his cumulative total of 29 standing nine better off than Hazard’s and exceeding any comparable player in the Premier League.

Of course, there are a fair number of those. English football, with its historical attachment to 4-4-2, physicality and 100 mph games, has learned to love and embrace the men scheming waspishly between the lines.

The creative number 10, for so long an exotic preserve of continental Europe and Latin America, is now the must-have accessory for teams chasing glory in England.

For Hazard at Chelsea and Eriksen at Spurs, read David Silva at Manchester City, Philippe Coutinho at Liverpool, Arsenal’s Mesut Ozil and Manchester United’s Juan Mata. All of this dazzling dozen are comfortably into double figures for goals and assists combined this term, while England international Ross Barkley is filling a similar role for Everton – scoring five and setting up eight in the process.

Here’s a look at training this week… pic.twitter.com/pTpl9RAMsP

— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) April 21, 2017

Bringing in beguiling foreign talents is far from a new phenomenon in the Premier League. The first flushes of television cash following the breakaway from the Football League brought an assortment of unforgettable mid-90s cult heroes, the likes of Juninho, Georgiou Kinkladze and Sasa Curcic.

Even so, before the “cold Wednesday night at Stoke” had been established as the ultimate barometer for such things, these men could still roundly be dismissed as “luxury players”.

Alex Ferguson’s dominant Manchester United teams were an irresistible force with their 4-4-2 – midfield power and precision, thrilling wing play and goals by the bucketful.

When Ferguson sought continental playmaking refinement in the form of record signing Juan Sebastian Veron in 2001, the results were mixed and palpable scepticism left the media faced with one of the Scot’s most famous hairdryer moments.

“Veron is a f****** great player” he said. “And you’re all f****** idiots.”

Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp are men whose passions rarely seem far from the surface and have also, from time to time, indulged in colourful press conference language. But it is hard to imagine either having to go in to bat for their men in such a blazing manner were Silva or Coutinho to experience a slump in form.

Players once viewed as luxuries are now a fundamental. Conte, Pochettino and Guardiola, as proponents of positional play, along with gegenpressing master Klopp, base much of their game plans upon exploiting the half space and pockets in which these skilful specialists thrive.

When Diego Costa grapples in his interminable style with the Spurs defence and Dele Alli thunders towards the Chelsea backline with bad intentions at Wembley, inevitably Hazard and Eriksen will not be far away. Stop them and you stop their team. Antonio, Mauricio… good luck with that.