Didier Drogba

Player Profile ::

Didier Drogba
Date of Birth: 11 March 1978
Country: Ivory Coast
Club: Chelsea
Global Goal Rating: 3465 (As of 30th September 2006)

After the arrival of Ukranian striker Andriy Shevchenko in the summer of 2006 there were many in England who gleefully predicted, because Didier Drogba is not universally loved the new season would be one where he would become marginalised at Chelsea. Instead as Shevchenko struggled to come to terms with the unique demands of the Premiership so Drogba thrived, playing the best football of his time with Chelsea, a brilliant hat trick against Levski Sofia in the Champions League and a stunning winner against Liverpool in the Premiership proof of the fact. This was the kind of form that Drogba was displaying routinely for Marseille in the 2003/4 season and it is what persuaded Chelsea to pay a then club record fee of £24million pounds in June 2004 to bring him to England.

Drogba scored 18 goals in 35 league games for Marseille, an excellent return in a league which is traditionally one of the lowest scoring in Europe. He was also in prolific form in European competitions in the 2003/4 season. Marseille exited at the group stage in the Champions League but not before Drogba had scored a terrific treble against Partizan Belgrade. Marseille's third place finish in their Champions League group ensured they went into that season's UEFA Cup and Drogba carried on scoring all the way to the final until they were beaten by Valencia 2-0.

Marseille weren't the first French club to benefit from the big Ivorian's talents. He had started his professional career at Le Mans in 1998 playing 64 games and scoring 11 goals before moving to Guingamp in 2001 managing a more than respectable 20 goals in 45 games.

At international level incredibly, Drogba has an even more impressive strike rate with 24 goals from 35 internationals. He made his debut, a non scoring one surprisingly in 2002 against South Africa but notched his first goal against Cameroon in the following match and has hardly stopped scoring since. He scored 9 goals in the 2006 World Cup qualifying campaign which saw the Ivory Coast at the World Cup for the first time. The Ivorians were pitched into the group of death with Argentina, Holland plus Serbia and Montenegro and despite playing some superb football the Africans just missed out on a place in the next round though Drogba did have the consolation of scoring a goal in Hamburg against the teak tough South Americans in a narrow 2-1 loss. However The Elephants will surely be better for this experience and when Africa takes its long overdue turn at hosting the finals it would not be the biggest surprise in the world were the Ivory Coast to lift the trophy, if that happened it is logical to assume that Chelsea's centre forward would play a pivotal role, if that was the case you can be sure that the Elephants main man, Didier Drogba, would never be forgotten.