Eden Hazard was only 20 when “burgergate” threatened to derail his promising international career. A talented Lille midfielder, he had broken into the Belgium team but after being taken off during a European Championship qualification match against Turkey in 2011 he almost threw it all away. 
Belgium coach Georges Leekens took him off on the hour and he reacted by storming down the tunnel without acknowledging his coach, leaving the stadium while the game was still being played and going to a burger restaurant with his family. 
His actions caused a scandal, dubbed “burgergate” in Belgium, and he was banned for two games by Leekens. Those were difficult times for Belgian football. The nation had failed to qualify for the 2010 World Cup and would also miss out on Euro 2012. 
Seven years on, 27-year-old Hazard is the Belgian captain who finds himself two games from lifting the World Cup. “This is not over yet. We are dreaming of more,” said Hazard after Belgium beat Brazil in the quarter-finals. 
His coach Roberto Martinez has said: “Eden is a great captain, a real leader. “He is always natural in the way he behaves and I really like that. He always wants the ball however the game is going. And he is in a great moment of form.” 
Hazard has two goals and two assists so far in Russia and has formed a formidable trio with Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku. 
It’s a long way from that show of indiscipline in 2011 that threatened an international career that had started four years earlier when he made his debut aged only 17. 
He got back on track and made it to his first World Cup in 2014, by which time his biggest problem was not staying onside with his coach but with fulfilling his huge potential. 
Belgium’s golden generation failed in Brazil and would also flatter to deceive two years later in France. Now, against the French, they have the chance to reach a final, and the mature cool-headed Hazard will be leading the players out in St Petersburg tomorrow.
 Alongside brother Thorgan, two years his junior and currently at Borussia Moenchengladbach, he has the chance to take Belgium further in a World Cup than they have ever been before. If they beat France they will leave the achievements of the talented Belgian team that reached the 1986 World Cup semi-finals in their wake. Just as Eden Hazard has long since left behind his petulant younger self.