Didier Drogba. Both a legend of the game and a man who helped his country attempt to achieve peace.
There is no one reason that I have decided that this will be the first article I publish on this website, all I can say is the man is responsible for some of my favourite moments as a Chelsea fan, especially the Champions League final. He is part of the so-called ‘100 club’ having scored 104 goals in his premier league career, winning 2 golden boots in the process.
But Drogba was more than this. He was a solid-brick wall leading one of the greatest ever Premier League team’s front line. Yes he may have had a penchant for diving, but what great striker in the modern game doesn’t? Need I mention Harry Kane or Mohammed Salah? VAR may have helped somewhat but the problem will always persist. Drogba also had a great reputation for scoring goals when they mattered the most, a true ‘big-game’ player. I remember going to the 2007 FA Cup final and seeing him score the winner that day, he was a beast of a player, bigger than everyone on the pitch, but perfectly in proportion. It was as if when he was made they decided to scale up a human to see what would happen. Watching Drogba and Lampard play together was one of the reason I fell in love with the game as a boy, their partnership was legendary, electric chemistry alongside talent that would not be matched until Harry Kane and Son Heung Min came into their element.
He had his flaws, perhaps not the most creative or consistently prolific player he had one key weakness, his temper. His Chelsea career was littered with controversy, from expressing his desire to leave the club following Mourinho’s departure in 2007 to his red card in the 2008 Champions League final, leaving a stain upon his legacy, potentially denying Chelsea of a Champions League win. That day he left the stadium to visit his dying Grandmother in the Ivory Coast, having promised Abramovich’s son that he will win him a Champions League one day. A promise he would later fulfil in spectacular fashion, which I will come to later.
This failure clearly drove Drogba to be even better. He became a defender’s worst nightmare, a bully to a backline, the grim reaper for Arsenal defenders and the Hulk in human form. Jamie Carragher in 2018 wrote about Liverpool’s tactic to keep Drogba quiet; it was simply ‘don’t rile Didier’, he would play at his best when angry, tanking through the backline as if they were a sheet of paper. Robert Huth, former teammate said after playing against him for Stoke ‘he bullied the back four by himself… it was 90 minutes of hell’. Even Nemanja Vidic, widely regarded as one of the best centre-backs in Premier League history, said Drogba was ‘on you for a full game’. He perfected the ability to be an irritant whilst also being a dangerous and immensely feared striker. He may not have been as prolific as other African players, but that was no longer Drogba’s role, he was put onto the pitch to scare defenders and create space for Torres or Lampard to be able to shoot. A completely underrated role by many, as shown by much abuse of Bobby Firmino’s role in the Liverpool squad by the statistic followers.
Perhaps Drogba’s greatest season in a Chelsea shirt came in the 2011-12 season, after an underwhelming start under the guidance of Andre Villas-Boas Drogba led much of the dressing room discontent towards the manager. However when Roberto Di-Matteo was appointed as interim manager for the rest of the season, Drogba saw a chance that not many others in the squad saw, a chance to finally lift that Champions League trophy. He led a team meeting in February of that season where he told the team he could’ve left in January but he didn’t, he loved playing for Chelsea and saw this love as a way to win that elusive trophy. He scored the winner against Liverpool in the FA Cup final months later, his 8th goal in a cup final for Chelsea. However, what truly made him the greatest big game player in Chelsea’s recent history was his goal just 2 weeks later to send the Champions League final to extra time.
Picture the scene: A game you have worked so hard to reach is nearing its end. You are playing one of the greatest teams in Europe with a rag-tag group of players, half of whom were not first choice or were injured. You are in extra time, a goal down, your Spanish playmaker Juan Mata is currently at the corner flag preparing to deliver a ball into the Bayern Munich box, you know this may well be your last chance to make the game level. These were the circumstances facing Drogba when he scored one of the greatest headers in Chelsea history. Was it spectacular? Not overly, nor was it on purpose, in fact the goal only went in due to Lampard’s foresight to move out of the way of an on-rushing Drogba. But this goal had meaning, he had equalised late on in the game in order to take it to penalties, he had beaten one of the greatest goalkeepers in the world and this game looked set to be Drogba’s last for the club, the picture perfect ending. When the penalties arrived it was down to Drogba to score the penalty that would decide whether Chelsea finally won that trophy they had failed to win 4 years prior or whether they would slip up yet again. With his final kick of his glorious 8 year stint at Chelsea he secured us a historic win. Chelsea had become the first team in London to win the Champions League, it was the final trophy to cap off what Abramovich had bought the club for, success. Chelsea was now a continental name, added to a list of winners that can boast Real Madrid, Barcelona and Liverpool. The club owed this success in no small part to the determination of Drogba and that promise he had made a crying child just 4 years prior. He cemented himself in the heart of every Chelsea fan, Didier Drogba, the man who won us a Champions League.
He left that summer, only to return during Mourinho’s second stint as Chelsea manager, however the second time he was mainly a useful backup and there as experience for the younger squad. Still, every time he stepped foot onto the pitch in that second stint, the fans became electric, I have never seen a Stamford Bridge atmosphere like it.
Whilst I may have largely focussed on his club career, Didier Drogba was more than that. He was a peacemaker and an icon for Ivory Coast fans. On the 8 of October 2005 the Ivory Coast needed to beat Sudan and hope that Cameroon would draw or lose against Egypt, a tall order considering Cameroon could boast the likes of Womé, Djemba-Djemba and Samuel Eto’o, arguably one of the greatest African strikers of all time.
But this fixture meant more than that to the Ivory Coast team, this was their golden generation, being able to boast the likes of Drogba, Kolo Toure, Eboue and Zokora. The team also knew that at home things were bad. The country had been effectively split in two because of a civil war that had begun in 2002, with the Government strongholds in the south of the country and the New Forces of Ivory Coast controlled the north.
Naturally, the Ivory Coast team dispatched the Sudanese team with ease. After their match had finished the whole team stood around a radio in the dressing room listening to the end of the Cameroon – Egypt match, which at that point was 1-1. Cameroon were awarded a penalty at the death of the game, but as if written in the stars, Womé missed the penalty, sending the Ivory Coast to the world cup for the first time in its history. With celebrations unfolding in the dressing room, Drogba noticed a TV camera and with Kolo Toure under his arm he grabbed the microphone. He began ‘from the north, south, centre and west, we proved that all Ivorians can coexist and play together for a shared aim… we promised you that the celebrations would unite the people – today we beg you on our knees… please lay down your weapons and hold elections’.
With this short speech the Ivory Coast team had stirred something within the nation, the attention Drogba had brought upon the conflict led to a ceasefire being signed. Whilst touring the nation following his win of the African footballer of the year in 2007 he made an announcement. Instead of holding the upcoming game against Madagascar in the capital Abidjan, it would instead be held in Bouake, the centre of the Rebels. As expected the Madagascan team was defeated, in fact demolished 5-0 with Drogba scoring the winner. The country became united again after this, if only for 5 years until President Gbagbo committed crimes against humanity and is currently held in Belgium after being trialled in The Hague. The team may not have stopped the war for good, but it gave the country hope, hope that things could be better, that there could be peace and every citizen could live together.
Drogba’s actions affected more than just football, the man earned the title of the king both on and off the pitch. He is the best example of the power of football, he was a star and people listened to him. He achieved something bigger than just trophies, he succeeded in inspiring and saving (if temporarily) thousands of people from needless slaughter. He brings this to his career after football, starting the Didier Drogba foundation in order to help people access education. He also hopes to run for a positon in the Ivorian football association as he wants to help football at the grassroots level in the country he loves.
So you are free to talk of statistics and how he isn’t the most prolific of African strikers in the Premier League, nor is he arguably the Ivory Coast’s most talented ever player, Yaya Toure exists afterall. But to me and millions of others Didier Drogba is the king, an inspiration for young strikers everywhere and living proof of the power of the beautiful game.
Thank you king, for everything you have done, for me and for everyone else that adores you and always will.
The Football Student
Sources:
Guiberteai O. (2020), Didier Drogba: How Ivory Coast striker helped to halt civil war in his home nation, BBC Sport
Twomey L., Johnson S., Fifield D. (2020), Dogba and destiny: from Stamford Bridge boos to Chelsea's greatest, the Athletic
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