Tags:
Journalism of Courage
When FIFA invited the great and the good to vote for their World Footballer of the Year, the managers of France, Malawi and Togo and the captains of Swaziland and Togo nominated Didier Drogba. How smug that quintet must have felt on Tuesday when Chelsea’s chief striker rammed two goals past Middlesbrough in the opening quarter of an hour.
World player of the year is stretching it a bit but Drogba is developing into the blue assassin that neither Hernan Crespo nor Adrian Mutu ever became.
No Newcastle United supporter will forget the lethal mistral that blew through their club when Drogba destroyed Bobby Robson’s team in a UEFA Cup semi-final last season on the south coast of France. It was Drogba’s exemplary final season with Marseilles that prompted FIFA’s voters to elevate him to 11th in the global ballot.
Last night, Drogba picked on Newcastle’s north-eastern neighbours, running on to an exquisite pass from Frank Lampard before flicking the ball round Gareth Southgate to open the scoring, and then connecting with a Lampard free-kick with a glancing header that embarrassed Boro goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer.
These were the eighth and ninth goals of his Chelsea career, midway through a debut year disrupted by injury. This was only his fourth start in Chelsea’s last 20 outings, and his 14th in all, which at least adds freshness to his limbs for the decisive second half of Chelsea’s quest to win the League title for the first time in 50 years.
Comparisons with Thierry Henry are too convenient, too symmetrical, to pass the accuracy police, but there is no doubt that Chelsea’s first big forays into the elite striker market led them to the wrong targets. Adrian Mutu’s drugs lust, we know all about. Hernan Crespo, meanwhile, was always too busy admiring himself in the mirror to really thrive inside the pinball machine of the Premiership.
Drogba has all Henry’s muscularity, and is a far superior header of the ball, but he lacks the Arsenal musketeer’s flashing pace and artistry.
On the basis of a second place finish in last season’s Premiership, and a semi-final appearance in the Champions League, some argued that Mourinho had only minor improvements to make to an eye-poppingly expensive squad.
In truth there have been four major reforms
• A hardening of team spirit, or mental toughness
• Improvements to an already good defence
• the injection of width, through Damien Duff and Arjen Robben
• a cull of the playboy (Mutu) the Hollywood showboaters, Crespo and Juan Sebastien Veron, plus Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who had exceeded his shelf-life as an A-list striker.
Three of the discards were forwards, so there could hardly have been more tinsel round Drogba’s name when he stepped off the plane from France, wearing a price tag inflated by Abramovich’s spending power.
Most managers of Champions League-challenging clubs tell their chairmen they need four specialist strikers. Chelsea have only three — Drogba, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Mateja Kezman — but compensate with goals from Lampard, their wide attacking midfielders, Duff and Robben, and John Terry, who has scored 21 times in 179 starts.
Twelve months ago (Jan 7), Chelsea lost 1-0 at home to Liverpool with a side including Crespo, Mutu and Jesper Gronkjaer. Claudio Ranieri’s team lost four of their last 19 Premiership matches, and won only two of their final seven during the phase of the season Ferguson calls ‘‘squeaky bum time’’.
It may return to haunt all those who see new armour around the heart of Mourinho’s Chelsea, but it’s almost inconceivable that the class of 2004-05 will wilt when Arsenal and Manchester United come in hot pursuit. With his injury problems seemingly behind him, and large parts of Africa believing him to be better than Ronaldinho — FIFA’s No 1 — Drogba’s mission is to become the great goalscorer Chelsea have been searching for to match Henry and Ruud van Nistelrooy.
(The Daily Telegraph)
