How Good was Didier Drogba?

Africa has produced some of the most iconic strikers of all time in the past few decades. Amongst the talents that the continent has had to offer, you'll often hear names such as Samuel Eto'o, George Weah and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to name a few. However, only one of these players has ever directly contributed towards ending a civil war within their country while also being known as the ultimate big game player, otherwise known as a clutch player. That man is Didier Drogba. Highly renowned for his brute strength, pace, ball striking technique and overall softness, Drogba was truly one of a kind. In his incredible career, he won just about every trophy on offer at club level and did so in style. But you already know what the deal is on this channel. Perhaps you can't recall how prolific this man once was. After all, he has been retired for a few years now. With that being said, how good was Didier Drogba really? What's up everyone, trust you're all doing well. Today, we'll be looking into the inspirational story of the great Didier Drogba. Born in 1978, Drogba and his family came from a city known as Abidjan, the capital city of the Ivory Coast. Although both of Drogba's parents were employed, they sent him to live with his uncle in France at the age of 5. The reason for this was that both of his parents, as well as his uncle, believed that he would have a better chance of leading a successful life there as opposed to in his native country. His uncle, Michael Gorba, quickly took Drogba under his wing and acted as a mentor and substitute parental figure. His uncle also happened to be a professional footballer in the early 80s and predominantly played for clubs in the French second division, also known as Ligue 2. Understandably, being around his uncle during his early years led to Drogba developing an intense passion for football. However, by the age of 8 in 1986, Drogba grew quite homesick and eventually returned home to be with his parents. Unfortunately, the Ivory Coast fell into a major economic crisis in 1989, which resulted in both of Drogba's parents losing their jobs. This prompted his parents to send him back to France once more to continue his education and further develop as a footballer. Upon returning to France, Drogba joined his very first football club, Tourcoing. Funnily enough, when he first began playing football formally, he played as a right back. In response to this, Drogba's uncle once asked, what are you doing stuck back there? Get up front! In football, people only look at the strikers and seeing as how his uncle was a striker himself, this response made a lot of sense. From this point on, Drogba began to focus on improving himself as a centre forward. Safe to say that this was one of the best decisions he made during his early footballing journey. Fast forward to 1997. Drogba had been slowly developing a reputation as a highly disciplined team player and a prolific goalscorer. He played for several youth football teams before eventually joining Le Mans, firstly on an apprenticeship and then as a first team player in 1998. He was 20 years of age at this point. Despite his obvious talent, his first four years of professional football were riddled with injuries. The reasoning for this was due to his complicated family life and the fact that he never stayed in one place during his upbringing. You see, he had never actually attended a football academy, therefore he only started undergoing rigorous daily training as a 19-year-old, which is incredibly late in case you were wondering. His body simply was not used to that kind of physical exertion. According to a former manager of his at Le Mans, it took Didier four years to be capable of training every day and playing every week. However, by 2002, at 24 years of age, Drogba had essentially fully developed into his body. In the same year, he transferred to Ligue 1 side Gengomb for a fee of £80,000. In his first full season with Gengomb, he scored 17 goals in 34 appearances, helping them to a 7th place finish in Ligue 1. To this date, this remains as their highest ever finish in the competition. His performances this season earned him a transfer to Marseille for £3.3 million at the beginning of the 2003-04 season. Now, his goal scoring did not end here as he scored 19 goals in 35 league appearances. At this point, the world has started to recognise Drogba for all the right reasons. He had impressive physical strength, pace, aerial ability, ball striking ability and most notably, immense ball retention ability. Remember that last one as it becomes highly relevant later in his story. Drogba only went on to spend one year at Marseille before eventually joining Chelsea at 26 years of age. He transferred for roughly £24 million. As many of us know, this was only one year after Chelsea was taken over by the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. 2004 also saw the appointment of a young Portuguese charismatic manager at Chelsea who had just won the Champions League with Porto. This manager was none other than the special one, Jose Mourinho. In Mourinho's first year with Chelsea, him and Abramovich spent over £98 million on fresh new talent to carry out his vision for the club, an absolutely huge sum at the time. Amongst those brought in to the club were players such as Michael Essien, Petr Cech, Riccardo Carvalho, Arjen Robben and many more, including Didier Drogba himself. This may seem outlandish today, but Abramovich and the Chelsea board exhibited quite a bit of hesitation when it came to signing Drogba. After all, he was relatively unknown, having only played two good seasons in the French league for clubs that were not title contenders in the slightest. However, in response to this, Mourinho simply said, Mr Abramovich, pay. Pay and do not speak. Abramovich would later learn that in this instance he was 100% correct in listening to Mourinho's suggestion. In his first season for the club, Chelsea went on to win the English Premier League for the first time in their history. Chelsea also won the Carling Cup, now known as the Carabao Cup, with Drogba scoring a goal in the final. This was the first goal in a long string of cup finals that would eventually give him the title of the ultimate big game player. Drogba scored 16 goals and made 8 assists in 41 total appearances this season. Nothing too flashy, but still a decent output. However, it was his overall contribution to the team that made him so special. His excellent strength and ball retention allowed him to be used as an effective outlet when Chelsea needed to clear the ball up the field. He was also very efficient in offloading the ball onto his teammates when they made their way up the field to join him. In addition to this, his tireless work rate and ability to quote-unquote defend from the front was crucial in helping Chelsea achieve a truly impressive defensive record this season, a season where they conceded only 15 goals in total in the league. As a side note, you can definitely expect a video on Chelsea's incredible 2004-05 season in the near future. Moving on to Drogba's international career with the Ivory Coast and his contributions to his country. In 2005, Côte d'Ivoire was a divided nation stricken by civil war. After helping the Ivory Coast national team qualify for their first ever World Cup in 2006, Drogba played with his countrymen on live television to put an end to the war. Shortly after this, the once divided nation began the process of reconciliation, bonding over their mutual love for football and the incredible achievement that the national team just accomplished. This was eventually met with a ceasefire only weeks later. Although it's hard to state that Drogba's words were the reason for this and there were obviously a plethora of other reasons for why the ceasefire occurred, it's hard to argue that he didn't at least have a little bit of influence regarding the words that he spoke on national television. Back to his club career. Despite picking up his first league title winner's medal, Drogba expressed a desire to leave Chelsea at the end of his first season with the club. The reasoning for this being that the 16 goals that he scored this season were only good enough to make him the third highest Chelsea goalscorer that season, behind Edgar Goodjohnson and Frank Lampard. He expressed a desire to return to Marseille where he could be the main goalscorer once more. This changed after Mourinho reiterated the importance of functioning as a team. He stated that at Chelsea there are 22 kings, you can either accept it or go back to where you came from and be the only king. This speech was enough to convince Drogba to shift his mindset and focus on contributing to the team rather than being the best individual. The following season saw more of the same for Chelsea as they won another Premier League title. At the time, this made them only the second club to ever win back-to-back Premier League titles with the only other club being Manchester United. Drogba's goalscoring output was identical to his previous season with 16 goals in 41 appearances but he also made 15 assists in total in the same amount of games. In the 2006-07 season, Drogba had his best goalscoring season to date. He scored 33 goals in 60 appearances with 20 in the Premier League. This earned him the Premier League golden boot for the first time in his career. Although Chelsea failed to retain the Premier League, they won both the FA Cup and the Carling Cup with Drogba scoring in both finals. In doing so, he became the only player to score in the finals of both competitions and win both in the same season. These performances earned him a 4th place finish in both the 2007 Ballon d'Or rankings as well as the FIFA World Player of the Year rankings, the highest finish of his career. Unfortunately, Jose Mourinho was sacked as the Chelsea manager at the beginning of the 2007-08 season. Drogba was one of many players that voiced their concerns over this decision, claiming that some of the players were playing more for the coach than for the club. Adding on to that, the 2007-08 and the 2008-09 seasons were riddled with injuries for Drogba. He only managed to play 43 league games combined in both seasons, scoring 13 goals over the Despite these obstacles, he still managed to win the FA Cup with Chelsea in 2009, scoring in the final yet again. However, he did come into a bit of controversy in a Champions League semi-final match against Barcelona this season. After Chelsea lost to Barcelona, many felt as though several decisions went against Chelsea in favour of Barcelona. Drogba was, of course, one of those people. This led to him berating the referee and receiving a yellow card in the process. In addition to this, after the final whistle, he shouted into a live television camera that the referee's decision was an absolute disgrace. In reality, he used a much stronger word than absolute, but I digress. This led to him being given a six-match ban from all European competitions. Moving along to the 2009-2010 season, this season saw Drogba enter his true goal-scoring prime at the age of 32. He scored 37 goals in 44 appearances. In the Premier League, he scored 29 goals in 32 appearances, winning the Premier League Golden Boot for the second time in his career. Chelsea also reclaimed the Premier League title, beating Manchester United to the top by one point. They also won the FA Cup for the second year in a row, securing an incredible double. And, you've probably guessed it, Drogba scored in the final. Fast forward to the 2011-2012 season. A 34-year-old Drogba was entering the final year of his Chelsea contract. Understandably, due to his age, amongst other factors, his game time was slowly reduced. Naturally, his goal-scoring output was also taking a bit of a dip. While Chelsea did win the FA Cup – and I'm sure you can guess who scored in the final – they finished the season in 6th place, their lowest finishing place since 2002. Despite this, Drogba arguably had the most important season of his entire career. The reason being that in this season, Chelsea won the Champions League for the first time in the history of the club, without going too much into Chelsea's road to the final against Bayern Munich, which quite frankly deserves a video in itself. Let me set the scene for how the final went down. After scoring the first goal of the game in the 83rd minute, Bayern Munich looked as though they were comfortably on the way to a 1-0 win. However, Didier Drogba had other ideas. Staying true to his cup final record, he scored a late-headed equaliser in the 88th minute to take the game to extra time – and then penalties. Chelsea went on to win the game on penalties with Drogba scoring the winning spot kick. And the rest is history. To this day, several people regard Drogba's equalising goal as the single most important goal in Chelsea's entire history. And it's not hard to see why. Despite winning the Champions League, Drogba did indeed leave the club and went on to join Shanghai Xinhua in the Chinese Super League on the 19th of June 2012. He spent only 7 months at the club before joining Galatasaray in the Turkish Super League on the 28th of January 2013. Drogba claimed that the reasoning for the switch was that Shanghai Xinhua had not paid him his weekly wages since joining. In Turkey, he won the Super League, the Turkish Cup and the Turkish Super Cup, scoring in the final of the latter. In a shock turn of events, Jose Mourinho returned to Chelsea as the head coach in 2014, after seemingly hashing out his issues with the Chelsea board. His first act as the manager was bringing in star names such as Diego Costa and Cisk Fabregas. In addition to this, Drogba also made a sensational return to Stamford Bridge. Understandably, the then 36-year-old Drogba was limited to cameo appearances, mostly coming off the bench. Nonetheless, he made 28 league appearances, scoring 4 goals in the process and helping Chelsea to yet another league title. Following the end of his one-season contract with Chelsea, Drogba made the transition to North American football. No, not that kind of North American football. He firstly joined Montreal Impact in the MLS in 2015 and later made the switch to Phoenix Rising in the USL in 2017. Finally, in November 2018, Drogba retired from professional at 40 years of age. All in all, within his incredible career, he won a multitude of prestigious trophies and titles. His most notable achievements include 4 Premier League titles, 4 FA Cups and a Champions League. Furthermore, he retired with an unbelievable record of scoring 10 goals in 10 cup finals, winning 10 cups. A truly fantastic player. Over the years, Drogba has been dismissed as one of the best strikers in Premier League history, simply due to the fact that he only scored 104 goals in 254 appearances. A relatively small amount in comparison to players such as Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney and Alan Shearer, for example, who scored 175, 208 and 260 goals respectively. However, the real reasoning for this was something that I previously mentioned in this video. In the Chelsea teams that he played for, every Chelsea player was tasked with scoring goals given the opportunity. Therefore, he did not shoulder the bulk of the goal scoring responsibilities that several other prolific goal scorers in the Prem did. Besides this, Chelsea's set-up in much of the mid to late 2000s was specifically focused on players making late runs from the midfield to the opposition penalty area to score. And they had the perfect player to do that in Frank Lampard. The partnership between Drogba and Lampard, where Drogba would bring the ball down and offload it to Lampard, was very fruitful indeed. What Drogba excelled at most was being a selfless, tough, intelligent player. He is regarded by most as a certified football icon. And there we have it. I'd be interested to hear what you all think about Drogba's incredible career, specifically considering the hardships that he faced in his early life and the unconventional route that he took to the top. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below. If you made it this far, thanks so much for tuning in. I'm really enjoying making these videos and you can definitely expect more to come in the future. As always, if you like the content, perhaps consider leaving a like and maybe even subscribing. But no pressure of course. Anyway, that's me. Hope you're all having an incredible day. Cheers and I'll catch you in the next one.