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Drogba, Didier


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Didier Drogba

Written by Alan and last updated by Loz in October 2010

winning%20goal%20in%202007%20f%20cup.jpg Quick, strong, good in the air, skilful and a fantastic finisher, Didier Drogba really is the complete striker. And unlike a certain Monsieur Henry he scores in cup finals. At this moment in time it is safe to say that Didier Drogba is one of the best strikers on the planet.

Didier Yves Drogba Tebily (phew!) was born in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast in 1978. Aged 5 he moved to France with his uncle Michael Goba, who was a professional footballer. He spent three years in Brest before moving back to the Ivory Coast. It was not long before Drogba returned to France, and It was during this time he began to play football.

drogba%20le%20mans.jpg He originally started out as a right-back, and his first club was Levallois, a National 2 (French fourth division) side. He rose through the ranks and made his debut aged 18. In 1998, Drogba turned down a trial at Paris Saint-Germain and signed for Le Mans. In his first season he scored a respectable 7 goals. Drogba's final two seasons for Le Mans were dogged by injury and he joined Guingamp in 2002 at the age of 24, having scored 11 goals in 62 appearances.

In his time at Guingamp, Drogba scored 20 goals in 45 appearances. It was during this spell that he first met and played with Florent Malouda, who is of course at Chelsea along with Drogba.

In 2003 Drogba signed for Marseille, one of the biggest clubs in France. At Marseille Drogba really made a name for himself, scoring 19 league goals and 11 in the Europe (5 in the Champions League and 6 in the UEFA Cup).

drogba%20marseille.jpg Marseille's UEFA Cup campaign would take them all the way to the final, where they lost to Valencia. Along the way Drogba scored and impressed against Liverpool and Newcastle, and also came to the attention of Jose Mourinho who of course was manager of Porto at the time.

didier%20october%202004.gif This stellar season persuaded Chelsea to part with a then club record fee of £24m for Drogba. Drogba's first season was a steady one, with him scoring 16 goals in 40 appearances, a good return considering he spent two months out with a torn stomach muscle. Drogba scored some vital goals as Chelsea won the Premiership and the League Cup, including a goal in the final versus Liverpool and strikes home and away against Bayern Munich.

The 2005/2006 season was to see Drogba again score 16 goals in all competitions, and Chelsea win the league again. But during this season Drogba displayed the one bad side of his game prominently; his penchant for going down easily.

drogba%20march%202006%20vs%20city2.jpg This reached a crescendo against Manchester City, where he handled the ball in the build-up to one of his two goals and seemed to go down easily in an incident with Richard Dunne. In a post-match interview he said "Sometimes I dive, sometimes I stand," before immediately retracting his comment saying: "I don't dive, I play my game." Drogba scores against Man City in March 2006

Some Chelsea fans even took to booing Drogba. In the summer he decided to stay and in the coming season he silenced the boo boys in spectacular fashion.

Drogba became and integral part of the team and scored 33 goals in all competitions, 20 of which were in the league, making him the top scorer for the season (all this without taking any penalties).

drogs%20african%20poty.jpg Drogba became the first Chelsea player to hit more than 30 goals in a season since Kerry Dixon in 1984/85 season. He scored some spectacular goals (Everton, Liverpool, Barcelona etc.) and also some vitally important ones, including both goals in the 2-1 win over Arsenal in the Carling Cup Final and the winner against Manchester United in the FA Cup Final. Drogba was also award the Ivorian Player of the Year and African Player of the Year Awards, as well as finishing runner up to Cristiano Ronaldo in the PFA Player of the Year award.

drogba%20vs%20valencia.jpg Drogba saw his start to the 07/08 season stunted by injury. He scored the winner against Reading but then had an extended period out through injury, returning against Fulham. Unfortunately he was sent off and Chelsea went on to draw 0-0. Things were about to get better in our next game however, as he was to score the winner against Valencia, putting in a great performance and helping us to win 2-1 and get our Champions League campaign back on track.

During the October international break, Drogba said in an interview with a French football magazine that he wants to leave Chelsea at the end of the season:

"Something is broken with Chelsea," he was quoted as saying. "The damage is big in the dressing-room. Nothing can stop me from leaving now."

Then the following day a statement was released via the Chelsea website, reaffirming his short-term commitment to the club.

"I am a Chelsea player and will be 100% committed and supportive to my manager, my team-mates and the club. I will not be discussing my future any further until I meet privately with the club at the end of the season."

dd%20against%20boro2.jpg Drogba then perfectly demonstrated his commitment to the club, scoring the opening goal in our 2-0 victory against Middlesbrough.

Drogba missed the Christmas period after undergoing surgery on his knee. Drogba made his Chelsea return in our 1-0 win over QPR in the FA Cup 3rd Round and departed for Ghana soon afterwards. Ivory Coast reached the Semi-Finals of the competition and Drogba scored 3 goals along the way.

drogba%20and%20essien%20after%20acn%203r

Upon his return to Chelsea he took a while to get going, but found the net in our Carling Cup Final defeat to Tottenham, placing a free-kick beyond Paul Robinson (admittedly this is not very hard to do!). If there's one thing Drogba loves doing, its scoring against Arsenal. He did precisely that in our 2-1 win over them at the end of March, which meant that Chelsea moved ahead of Arsenal in the table.

Then, in the build-up to the second leg of our clash with Liverpool, Rafael Benitez accused Drogba of going down a little easily, which is akin to claiming the sky is blue or that grass is *gasp* green.

Drogba then preceded to show Benitez what an idiot he was in making those comments by scoring twice in our 3-2 win, and also made a point of celebrating right in front of the tubby Spaniard. But if there's one thing you can say about Didier Drogba, its that he is a bit temperamental . He amply demonstrated this in the Champions League Final by 'slapping' Vidic in extra-time and getting himself sent off. It was a very stupid thing to do and the Chelsea fans around me in the Luzhniki stadium were not best pleased, and made sure Drogba knew it.

Didier_Drogba_Chelsea_1265.jpg

October 2010 Update by Loz

The 2009/10 proved that, similar to Rooney’s opinion on woman, Didier gets better with age. He started the season with a bang helping us win the Community Shield then scoring a brace against Hull in the opening league game. From then on he never looked back, the goals came thick. By the turn of the year he had scored 19 goals in all competitions and only failed to hit the target in 9 of the 24 competitive games he had played in. Even when he wasn’t scoring he was setting them up. Particularly noteworthy was the two assists he got when we beat Liverpool 2-0 in October (Malouda and Anelka getting the goals).

Drogba was away on African Cup of Nations duty during January and on his return it was like he had never been away. He scored a further 6 goals in February including a brace against Arsenal and a further 5 goals in March (including his 30th of the season in all competitions against Portsmouth).

By now we were very much at the business end of the season and Didier’s decisive goal in the 2-1 win over Manchester United (granted it was offside however let’s not forget Utd’s goal was punched into the net) turned the title race in our favour.

On the last day of the season Chelsea needed to beat Wigan to ensure the title returned to the Bridge. Drogba and Rooney started the day on 26 goals each and Drogba was determined to win the title and the golden boot. Chelsea went 1-0 up and were then awarded a penalty which Drogba wanted to take. Regular penalty taker Lampard was rightly having none of it as the game was far from secured and he stepped up to make it 2-0. Didier had a right childish strop and didn’t even celebrate the goal. By the time the game was done he was all smiles again as he had secured a hat-trick (including being allowed to take a later penalty), Chelsea had won the title and the golden boot was firmly in the bag.

Drogba then went on to score the only goal in our 1-0 FA Cup win over Portsmouth. Ridiculously Rooney was still awarded player of the year despite scoring less goals, having less assists and winning bugger all. Just another clear example of the FA favouring English players over foreigners.

The 2010/11 season started in much the same way as the 2009/10 season went. He scored a hat-trick against West Brom, had three assists against Wigan and scored further goals against Stoke, Blackpool and his customary goal against Arsenal.

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