Didier Drogba

[killer1257 3,282]

Didier Drogba says he was offered a ‘perfect’ coaching role at Chelsea but rejected a return to Stamford Bridge so he could bid to become the next president of the Ivorian FA

 

https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/14/didier-drogba-snubbed-chelsea-coaching-offer-pursue-top-ivorian-fa-job-11126738/?ito=newsnow-feed?ito=cbshare

Good luck DD 

Tammy learning from Drogba would have been crazy

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Chelsea legend Drogba finally takes selfie with Mbappe 10 years after he first snubbed PSG superstar

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/10471208/chelsea-drogba-selfie-mbappe-10-years-after-snubbed-psg/

 

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Drogba and destiny: From Stamford Bridge boos to Chelsea’s greatest

https://theathletic.com/1765455/2020/04/24/chelsea-didier-drogba-champions-league-mourinho-penalty/

Walking from the halfway line to the penalty spot at the Allianz Arena to take the most important kick of his life, Didier Drogba was still weighing up his options.

He briefly contemplated surprising Bayern Munich goalkeeper Manuel Neuer with a Panenka, before dismissing it as too risky. He then decided on a whim to shorten his traditional penalty run-up to just two steps, to minimise the possibility of the giant German guessing where he would put the ball from his body language.

Drogba had no plan for the moment he knew would define his Chelsea legacy, and yet he had no doubt in his mind. “I told myself something that I have been telling myself since I was a young boy,” he recalled in his autobiography. “’You love being in this position. If you score, we win. If you miss, you miss. But you love that responsibility.’ It’s true, I loved it, and although I sometimes missed, I scored much more often than not.

“It’s more difficult for a goalkeeper to save than for the player to score, so the odds were definitely in my favour. Plus, I just felt the script had been written. When it’s yours, it’s yours, nothing anyone can do. On another day, I might have been stressed. On this day, I felt strangely calm. At peace.”

The resulting penalty went one way, Neuer the other. Drogba’s guiding sense of destiny had lifted Chelsea to the pinnacle of European football — a fittingly spectacular climax to a wild eight-year ride in which he had seized control of so many of the moments that mattered most. Yet the unlikeliest Champions League triumph of this century was also an unexpected fairytale for a man whose Stamford Bridge career had frequently threatened to flame out in less than iconic fashion.

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Drogba did not always feel like the master of his own fate. By his own admission he “cried and cried” when Marseille accepted Chelsea’s mammoth £24 million offer for him in the summer of 2004, weeks they had given him a new contract. “I felt as if someone had stabbed me in the heart,” he later recalled. “I didn’t want to leave. I was disgusted at having to sign for Chelsea. That may seem strange, but that’s how I felt. I was really down.”

Jose Mourinho’s presence at Stamford Bridge helped change his mind. He had pledged to sign Drogba after his Porto side had beaten Marseille in the Champions League a year earlier, and sent his scout Andre Villas-Boas to watch him regularly and keep in touch. Now, backed by the riches of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, he had the money to make it happen.

“I remember clearly Abramovich was asking me, ‘Who? Who do you want for the striker?’ All the big names in Europe at that time… I said, ‘Drogba’,” Mourinho later recalled on beIN Sport. “He said, ‘Who is he? Where is he playing?’ and I said, ‘Mr Abramovich, pay and don’t speak.’”

Abramovich and Mourinho both greeted Drogba when he landed at Farnborough Airport on the Russian’s private jet, and Chelsea’s manager put his new signing at ease by addressing him in French. “How are you, my friend?” he asked. “You’re a good player. But if you want to become a great player, you have to play for me. Marseille is a good club, but for you to become a better player, you have to play for a great club, like Chelsea, and you have to play for me.”

Drogba’s adaptation to Chelsea was bumpy. He felt constrained by his limited English and underwhelmed by the club’s training facilities at Harlington. He didn’t even recognise John Terry. “I noticed a tall strong guy who looked so young, and who walked and carried himself in such a way that I assumed he was from the reserves,” he recalled in his autobiography. “‘That’s interesting,’ I thought. ‘They’ve obviously brought him over to get a bit of senior squad experience.’ Towards the end of the session, I asked another player who the young guy was. ‘It’s the captain!’ he replied, laughing.”

Things were even more difficult on the pitch, where Mourinho was challenging Drogba to transform his game. He had primarily played on the shoulder of the last defender in France and used his speed to run in behind, but at Chelsea he was the target man, often receiving the ball with his back to goal and bringing others into play. The role required him to battle defenders in a league that tolerated a higher level of physical contact than anything he had experienced before.

“Everywhere else in Europe, when that sort of foul happens, you go down and the referee gives a yellow card to the defender,” he said. “In England, when you get fouled, you have to stand up and shake the guy’s hand. It makes me laugh now, but at the time, it was a big culture shock and let’s just say that I took a long time to get used to it.”

Drogba’s body took a pounding; he missed almost two months of the 2004-05 campaign after undergoing groin surgery, and played in just 55 of Chelsea’s 76 Premier League matches in his first two seasons. Frank Lampard outscored him in both, and even a decisive extra-time strike against Liverpool in the 2005 League Cup final was scant indication of what lay ahead.

Chelsea were dominant, but Drogba was not. He was, however, wildly unpopular, even among his own club’s supporters. A series of high-profile diving incidents established him as a villain in the eyes of many. In the closing stages of a match against Manchester City in March 2006, he was even booed by Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge for going to ground after a tussle with Richard Dunne — having scored both goals in a 2-0 win.

Scarred by the experience, Drogba admitted publicly that he wasn’t happy at Chelsea in spite of the team’s success. “It’s not a joke,” he said. “I want to move on and avoid all the pressures and scandals here. I want a place where I can play freely without any drawbacks. You should know what a player goes through with so much pressure. I admire AC Milan but anywhere I go, the Champions League will be there waiting for me. Those things (being booed) hurt my feelings.”

Drogba’s troublesome reputation in England at the time stood in stark contrast to the god-like status he had earned in his native Ivory Coast: he had led the national team in an impassioned televised plea for president Laurent Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro to cease hostilities in October 2005, minutes after sealing World Cup qualification for the first time in the country’s history.

Despite a second consecutive Premier League title under Mourinho, uncertainty about Drogba’s future at Stamford Bridge continued into summer 2006. Then Lampard intervened.

“One day, just after the World Cup, I was having a short family holiday in Marrakech when I received a text message from him,” Drogba said. “Strange, because I didn’t remember ever having been texted by him during the entire two seasons I’d already been at Chelsea. I looked at the message, and I remember it to this day: ‘Hi DD, I hope that you’re staying, because we have to win the league together, and we have to win the Champions League together!’ I just stared at the phone.

“That was the day that freed me, gave me wings, allowed me to show what I was capable of. The need to feel wanted, loved and valued by others has always been a vital motivating factor for me, and that single message was the catalyst that I needed for my career at Chelsea to take off.”

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Drogba scored 33 goals across all competitions in the 2006-07 season, more than he had managed in his first two years at Chelsea combined. His improvement covered both for the departure of Hernan Crespo and the struggles of Andriy Shevchenko, acquired from AC Milan for £30.8 million at the urging of Abramovich the previous summer. A resurgent Manchester United claimed the title, but he underlined his growing big-game prowess by scoring the winner in a tight FA Cup final.

“Extra time began, and I started to have cramp,” Drogba later said. “This was not good. I ran over to the side of the pitch and called to the manager, ‘You need to make a change because I can’t run any more. I’m done.’ He was having none of it. ‘No, no. You don’t need to run. Just stay there, just stay there. You will score. Just focus. Just one ball and you will score!’”

In the midst of Chelsea’s celebrations at Wembley, Drogba ran to the dressing room and interrupted Mourinho on the phone to his wife in order to make sure he lifted the trophy with his players.

At the time, Drogba’s bond with Mourinho was stronger than the connection he felt to Chelsea. Their parting embrace following Mourinho’s sacking in September 2007 left Drogba crying in the first-team dressing room at Cobham. He sought an explanation in person from Abramovich and gave an explosive interview to France Football, which ran the following month.

“My decision is taken,” he insisted. “Nothing could keep me here now. I know there’s talk of Ronaldinho and Kaka coming here next season but that won’t change my mind. I won’t go back on this decision. No doubt because there’s something broken with Chelsea. I’ve always had a bizarre relationship with Chelsea. On the very first day, I wanted to leave. It was the same every summer too. But despite that I stayed for four seasons, the best of my career.”

Chelsea issued a statement insisting Drogba was still committed to the club, but in a team meeting he declined to offer more than his commitment for the rest of the 2007-08 campaign. The bizarre and fraught sequence of events ended with him scoring the opening goal in a 2-0 away win against Middlesbrough, wheeling away in front of the visiting supporters and kissing the badge.

Knee surgery and the Africa Cup of Nations limited Drogba’s ability to contribute under Mourinho’s replacement Avram Grant, though he did score both goals in a 2-1 home win over Arsenal and twice more against Liverpool to send Chelsea into the 2008 Champions League final in Moscow. There, his emotional volatility surfaced again – and changed the course of his career.

After unsuccessfully lobbying Grant to pair him with Nicolas Anelka up front in extra time, Drogba’s frustration boiled over. A straight red card in the 116th minute for slapping Nemanja Vidic threatened to become the lasting stain on his Stamford Bridge legacy, particularly in light of Chelsea’s subsequent defeat to United in an agonising penalty shootout.

Drogba’s preparations had been clouded by the news that his grandmother was in hospital in Ivory Coast, and on the verge of dying. Abramovich granted the striker use of his private jet to return to his homeland and say goodbye, but not before Drogba made a promise to the Chelsea owner’s crying son Arkadiy in the dressing room: “One day, I will win the Champions League for you.”

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The road from Moscow to Munich had the twists and turns of a rollercoaster, and no other Chelsea player lived the journey quite so intensely. At the end of referee Tom Henning Ovrebo’s night to forget at Stamford Bridge in the 2009 Champions League semi-finals, the lasting image that accompanied Andres Iniesta’s last-minute winner for Barcelona was Drogba, wide-eyed with fury in flip-flops on the touchline, shouting: “It’s a fucking disgrace.”

By then he had navigated another sliding doors moment, having been informed by new manager Luiz Felipe Scolari that he was surplus to requirements in January 2009. There was even talk of a swap deal with Inter Milan for Adriano, only for Abramovich to inform Drogba that no such move would be sanctioned.

Premier League rivals must have cursed their luck. Even in his less prolific scoring stretches, Drogba had grown into a striker uniquely feared by opposition centre-backs for his blend of strength, speed, technical ability and intelligence. From the 2006-07 season onwards he had become the bully rather than the bullied, with Arsenal — and Philippe Senderos in particular — his favourite victims. All in all, he scored 13 goals in 15 career matches against Arsenal across all competitions.

William Gallas, one of Drogba’s closest friends at Chelsea, gained a new appreciation for the Ivorian after leaving Stamford Bridge to join Arsenal in 2006.

“I was used to seeing him in training, but you know how it goes: you’re never going at 100 per cent on the training pitch,” he said. “So I never really understood why Senderos would just go missing in every match he played against Didier. But when I played against him myself in the Premier League with Arsenal, then I understood.

“He had something about him, a power I’d never sensed as a team-mate, an aura I had never seen before. Facing that, you just shit yourself. He was so intimidating that it rattles you.”

Drogba’s aura reached its peak in Chelsea’s historic Double-winning 2009-10 campaign. He scored 29 goals in 32 Premier League appearances, claiming the Golden Boot award despite missing the entire month of January due to Africa Cup of Nations commitments. “It was a really special year when I felt fulfilled, professionally and personally,” he later said. “My body felt good, my football felt easy.”

Robert Huth was Drogba’s team-mate at Chelsea from 2004 to 2006, but his lasting memory of the Ivorian comes from a visit to Stamford Bridge with Stoke City for an FA Cup quarter-final in March 2010. “He played by himself up front,” he tells The Athletic. “For the first ball he always comes across your left or right shoulder to win the header, and within the first two minutes I was lying on my back after being absolutely smashed by him.

“I knew he had it in him but he was loving it — and not only that, he did it to all four of us. He bullied the whole back four by himself. It was a very humbling 90 minutes. I remember looking up as he was jogging off, and I was on my arse thinking, ‘Oh my god, what happened here?’ Usually, it was the other way around.

“It was 90 minutes of hell. He was annoyingly good, because if you dropped off he would just come short, get the ball and run at you. If you got tight to him, he would do it the other way. You really had to be at the top of your game against him. In terms of Premier League strikers, he’s probably the No 1 I’ve played against.”

Jamie Carragher fared better than most against Drogba in their 26 career meetings — success he attributes to Liverpool’s broader approach. “The rule was: don’t rile Didier,” he wrote in a Telegraph column in 2018. “When he was angry he seemed to play even better. If his temper was up he was like the Hulk, ploughing through everything in his path, impossible to knock off the ball, a real force of nature.

“Looking back I think Drogba changed perceptions about what a striker could do and the way in which a team could be shaped. Many times he did the job of two players and it allowed his managers at Chelsea to change the team around him.”

Drogba considers Rio Ferdinand and Vidic the most difficult opponents he faced. When the Serb was asked by FourFourTwo magazine in 2016 whether the Ivorian or Fernando Torres gave him more trouble, he didn’t hesitate. “Drogba was tougher,” he said. “Torres always created a chance to score, but Drogba was on you for the full game.”

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Part of the rationale to Chelsea signing Torres for £50 million in January 2011 was that Drogba could no longer be relied upon to lead their attack for an entire season. Their belief was strengthened by the Ivorian contracting malaria in the months prior, and he was expected to assume the role of elder statesman in the squad. His personality and big-game impact had already seen him gradually become part of the leadership group in the managerial flux that followed Mourinho’s departure.

Villas-Boas returned to Stamford Bridge the following summer tasked with accelerating the transition, and Drogba spoke up against his style of play in a team meeting as the 2011-12 season threatened to unravel. When the Portuguese was dismissed and replaced by Roberto Di Matteo in March 2012, he again took the opportunity to make his feelings known to the group.

“I could have left in January, but I’m still here,” he said. “Why? Because I believe we have a chance to win the Champions League. Maybe I’m wrong and we won’t, but I will do everything to win it.

“I have been here for eight years now, and when they put me on the bench, I don’t complain. So if I see a guy who is complaining because he’s not playing, or something isn’t happening for him, he will have a problem with me. If you’re not happy because you’re not playing, go and see the manager. But between us, the players, we want to see happy people, we want to enjoy our football, so let’s try to win the Champions League.”

His influence was felt throughout Cobham. He had gone out of his way to introduce himself to a new signing, Thibaut Courtois, back in the summer of 2011, and the goalkeeper wasn’t the only one. “I met Didier when I was still thinking about which club I was going to join,” Nathan Ake tells The Athletic, recalling the period after he decided to leave Feyenoord in his youth.

“I was with my father (Moise) at the training ground, looking around and he was training outside. He was a hero for both of us because he played for Ivory Coast (where Moise is from). We were both a bit starstruck, but he came over to us and was very nice. He talked to us for a little bit. I hadn’t made my mind up before then, but after that my decision was quite easy! He told me, ‘If you want to be at a big club and win trophies, then join us.’”

On the pitch, the next few months yielded the most impactful football of Drogba’s career. His bullet header sparked Chelsea’s fightback against Napoli in the Champions League round of 16 and then, within the space of three days in April, he netted the opener against Tottenham in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley and scored the winner at home to Barcelona, both with his left foot.

The goal against Spurs in particular — controlling a Lampard pass on his chest, rolling Gallas and lashing an astonishing volley into the top corner — underlined the partnership that had been fundamental to Chelsea’s success; he and Lampard combined for 36 Premier League goals, more than any other duo in the history of the competition.

“After training, we would often stay behind for five, 10 or even 20 minutes, working in front of the goal, trying to put the ball in the net by developing a partnership where each of us instinctively knew where the other one was going to be, or what he was going to do next,” Drogba said of Lampard. “Frank worked and worked, as did I, and we pushed each other constantly to become better and better players.

“Like me, he’d had to work really hard throughout all his career to reach the level he did, so we had similar mentalities and we instinctively understood each other. Our success hadn’t come easily, and we both knew that talent was never enough; hard work could beat talent. That work ethic is one of the many reasons why I have so much respect for Frank, and why I feel honoured to have had such an amazing partnership with him at Chelsea.”

They combined again for Drogba’s winner against Liverpool in the 2012 FA Cup final – his eighth cup final goal for Chelsea. His ninth, that towering extra-time header against Bayern Munich to send the Champions League final to penalties a fortnight later, will always be the most famous.

“As I ran to the touchline and sank to my knees to celebrate, I was in a complete trance,” he recalled in his autobiography. “I’d been speaking to God for many minutes now, begging him, ‘If you really exist, show me, show me!’ So when I scored, all I could do was thank him over and over again, raising both index fingers up to the heavens, as a way to say, ‘Why, why, why? Why had he shown me?’ I had asked — and I had received. It was unimaginable, unhoped for, and completely inexplicable.”

Drogba’s faith had fed his belief even as it was tested, by the penalties he conceded against Barcelona and Bayern and by the setbacks Chelsea endured. When it came time to face Neuer for one final time with the Champions League on the line, he was convinced that just as destiny had been against his side in 2008, so it was with them now.

In the celebrations that followed, Drogba was the star of the show as he directly addressed the cup with the big ears. “Why have you avoided us, eluded us, for so long?” he asked. “Why have you punished us so much? For all these years you have flirted with us, tempted us, then run away. We thought you would come to us at Anfield twice, but you did not listen.

“Then in Moscow, you made us believe you were ours but turned your back, refused to let us touch you. Against Barcelona, again, you tortured us, made us want you even more, made it even harder. And even tonight, you hurt us first. Made us suffer. Made us fear it would be the same again, the late goal, the penalty kick, until the end. And now, at last, you belong to us.”

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When he finally left Chelsea in 2012, Drogba’s legend was unassailable; in a poll of supporters conducted that summer, he was voted the club’s greatest-ever player. When he returned to reunite with Mourinho two years later, it was to play a smaller role in creating the conditions for a new cycle of silverware at Stamford Bridge.

“When he came back, I told him, ‘You are not No 1 any more but I need you to help me with the team, with the more experienced players, with (Eden) Hazard, with Willian, with the young guys,’” Mourinho said. “He was phenomenal again. There are players who, with their personalities, are important from day one of their career until the end.”

Ake agrees his influence had not diminished: “In his second spell, he was still a big leader. Everyone would listen to him. Whether he was playing or not, he was always trying to get positivity in the team. He still played a massive part that season. He gave everything. He wanted to make sure the standard of training and in games remained high. It was good to have him back for that year.”

Drogba’s biggest contribution to Chelsea’s future success had been made a few weeks after his departure in 2012: he got countryman Gervinho to call up Hazard, his Lille team-mate, and then pass him the phone to pitch Chelsea to the Belgian, who had his pick of elite European clubs. “I was flattered,” the winger later said. “He was maybe the best striker in the world.”

A fourth Premier League winners’ medal was his reward, coupled with a few more scattered flashes of the old magic along the way: an opener against United at Old Trafford, a goal in a 3-0 rout of Tottenham and, at the end of April, a crucial equaliser away to Leicester. For the second time, he got to say goodbye on his terms, carried off the Stamford Bridge pitch by his team-mates against Sunderland on the final day. His parting message on the tactical board at Cobham read “Blue till I die”, accompanied by his signature in permanent ink.

He has been a fairly frequent visitor to Stamford Bridge since — most surreally in December 2015, when he sat in Abramovich’s box with Guus Hiddink and observed Chelsea supporters abusing their own players in the wake of Mourinho’s second sacking. But he has so far resisted any offers to return in a more permanent and formal capacity, even as his old team-mates Lampard, Petr Cech, Ashley Cole and Joe Cole have been brought back into the fold.

That is partly because Drogba has long since abandoned any thought of a career in coaching or management. His sense of higher purpose has driven his work with the charitable foundation that bears his name and led him to enrol in UEFA’s Executive Master for International Players course, alongside the likes of Florent Malouda, Andrey Arshavin and Kaka.

He is interested in the bigger picture of football and plans to run for a position with the Ivorian Football Association. “I had an offer to stay at Chelsea where everything would be perfect and conditions are met,” he said in December. “But I want to help Ivorian football because I love it.

“I am a leader, and my vision is bigger than just the simple role of being a coach. A coach has an impact on a club — but I want to have an impact on an entire nation.”

But even if he continues to tread a separate path, Drogba’s influence will continue to be felt at Chelsea. Tammy Abraham’s celebration of his winning goal against Arsenal in December, running to the Emirates Stadium corner flag with arms outstretched like his boyhood idol, underlined just one of the many ways that his legacy will live on.

Perhaps one day when they build a statue of Drogba outside Stamford Bridge, that will be the pose. Or perhaps it will be him standing over the penalty spot in Munich, certain of his destiny.

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The Legend of Didier Drogba

This week, host Matt Davies-Adams and The Athletic's resident Chelsea experts; Liam Twomey, Simon Johnson & Dom Fifield reflect on Drogba's Chelsea career - from being booed by his own fans for diving, to destiny fulfilled in Munich in 2012.

Plus, the guys discuss the on-going internal dispute over player wage-cuts, Coutinho to Chelsea rumours and Olivier Giroud's future.

 

https://theathletic.com/podcast/139-straight-outta-cobham/?episode=24

[Fulham Broadway 16,829]

Rated better than Ibrahimovich. We knew that anyway..

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8303735/Didier-Drogba-beats-Zlatan-Ibrahimovic-named-Ligue-1s-best-striker-past-20-years.html

[Laylabelle 9,351]

5 years since he last game. Time flies! Definitely miss his presence at times but glad he ended on another league title.

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10 hours ago, Laylabelle said:

5 years since he last game. Time flies! Definitely miss his presence at times but glad he ended on another league title.

 

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This is why it’s called the @premierleague

 

 

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Laylabelle 9,351]

Good to see him get a award. Deserves it..and he gave us a nice draw too!

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The King

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12 minutes ago, Vesper said:

The King

Proper player, proper legend

[Jase 43,479]

 

[milka 3,344]

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46 minutes ago, milka said:

what a great story!!!!

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Didier Drogba's Golden Boot Winning Season | All 29 Goals | Premier League 2009/10

Take a look back at Didier Drogba's iconic 2009/10 season where he secured the Golden Boot with 29 goals.

[OhForAGreavsie 5,890]

From Didier's Facebook page:

 

As the new @premierleague season starts, before the first @chelseafc home game, I wanted to highlight and thank two People who were so important during my time at the Club.

First of all, I want to thank Marina for always supporting me in the good moments and even the difficult moments at the club, when most people were criticising me for saying loud (maybe a bit too loud actually) and clear what I felt unfair ( champions league CFC v Barcelona 2009 )

Only @marina_granovskia and a handful of people understood it as someone who cared for the club, the badge and the fans.

Her contribution to this club is beyond what people on the outside know.

Over nineteen years she worked so hard to build a world class club and to keep the blue flag flying high in the world of football.

And to Roman,

Boss, no need to tell stories of moments we shared together.

MY LOYALTY AND RESPECT FOR YOU IS FOR LIFE !!!

On both a professional and a personal level I can never thank you enough for your belief and support and the vision you created to help us all achieve our dreams.

You came unknown in to the football world, you leave having won everything possible @chelseafc

Together we made history that no one can take away

It is here forever