It was a joyous moment as beer flew through the air at the Football Factory, a small, dark-wooded piece of soccer heaven in the basement of a midtown Manhattan sports bar. Chelsea had just scored their fourth goal of the night, putting Wednesday’s Europa League Final out of Arsenal’s reach. It was also a bittersweet moment, a feeling which set in once all would-be thrown cups and spilled bottles were empty, because of the man who scored it.

It was Eden Hazard’s second goal of the night, and his final goal for a club he became synonymous with over the past seven seasons.

Like anyone who has supported Chelsea in that time, I owe him a thank you. But my gratitude goes beyond simply wearing the same color jersey he did, as without Hazard I’m not positive I’d be where I am at the moment.

Chelsea last won the Europa League in 2013 in Hazard’s first year with the club, a year in which he was most remembered for kicking a Welsh ball boy.

He was an immature 22-year old, and though his raw talent was obvious (Frank Lampard commented that Hazard “scared the life” out of defenders), not many would have thought the former Lille winger would soon be in the conversation as one of the world’s best players.

Meanwhile, I was 19, had just finished my freshman year of college, and all I knew about soccer was what I had gained from occaisionally playing FIFA with my friends (and I was terrible).

That summer my dad found himself staying at the hotel attached to Stamford Bridge, and brought back with him a blue, subtly pin-striped, Samsung-emblazoned Chelsea jersey (I’m biased, but I don’t think they’ve had a better home shirt since). A couple of my high school friends were Chelsea fans, and I figured why not. They were fun enough on FIFA and were arch-rivals with Arsenal, the team favored by a couple of my FIFA-playing college friends.

What really brought these ingredients together into fandom, though, was NBC’s acquisition of the Premier League TV rights beginning in the fall of 2013. For the next 3 seasons, almost without fail, I could be found on the enormous brown couches of the Siegfried Hall 4th floor TV lounge every Saturday and Sunday morning watching Chelsea and any other EPL game that happened to be on.

I was hooked.

One of the things that kept me hooked was watching Eden Hazard. The ball stuck to his foot in a way that is only eclipsed in contemporary soccer by Lionel Messi. He made defenders look like statues as he wove through them and shook off others twice his size. He also had the cockiest penalty-taking style I’ve ever seen: staring the keeper in the eyes, never looking at the ball as he calmly passed it into the opposite corner of wherever the keeper dove.

This was a great time to become a Chelsea fan, as they won two titles in the next four years. Also because that season, 2013/14, would be Frank Lampard’s last for the club, and I’m grateful to have been able to witness a small portion of the greatest player in club history’s career. I also got to see the end of Fernando Torres, so there’s that.

Anyway, my Premier League obsession couldn’t have been better timed. After that school year, I was given the opportunity to spend six weeks abroad in the summer. London was an option, and there was never a second choice. Better yet, it was a World Cup summer (although not great for England). I fully came to understand the unifying power of the sport both by crowding into bars to watch with English fans, for whom the sport is far more than a game, and by finding a bar stuffed with Americans to watch the USA take on Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal.

I truly felt like a soccer fan by that point.

Fast forward a few years, and Eden Hazard had become one of Europe’s elite players on his way to becoming a Chelsea legend. Meanwhile, I’m living in Dayton, OH and feeling like there’s just something missing from my life.

While I could write pages (and maybe will sometime) about the personal details of this period of time, one thing that was definitely missing was sports. So in April of 2017 I started a blog, writing about whatever topics popped into my head during excruciatingly boring hours at work.

I found myself writing about soccer a lot: the Premier League, Chelsea, the US Men’s National Team.

This was in addition to helping produce high school football and basketball broadcasts for a local TV station based in Springfield, OH (shout-out to Local TV 4 Me). Sports were my outlets, which helped me realize that perhaps they could even be a career.

Two years on, I’m writing about soccer as part of a job and announcing minor league soccer games. And in New York of all places (though my time here is coming to a close).

I don’t know if I’d be doing that if it wasn’t for the Premier League being on TV, or my friends from high school being Chelsea fans (you know who you are, and though you may not feel like you did anything special, trust me when I say I owe you a ton), or my dad buying that jersey, or Chelsea being good in large part due to a diminutive Belgian soccer wizard named Eden Michael Hazard.

So thank you Eden for making it fun to be a Chelsea fan these last six years.

But thank you also for being a reason I fell in love with this at times silly but forever beautiful sport that’s become such a big part of my life.