(Big) Game Theory — Didier Drogba, The African King
Didier Drogba is a player that I begrudgingly respect as a Manchester United fan and quite honestly I believe he is one of the top five strikers of the Premier League era.
Now that declaration will be met with (possibly angry) shouts of “How can he be one of the best strikers when he didn’t even score that many goals?”
Drogba only scored more than 12 goals over the course of a season on two occasions at Chelsea; 29 in the 2009/10 season and 20 in the 2006/7 season (on both occasions he won the Golden Boot). And on four occasions he failed to reach double figures over the course of the season despite leading the line for the London Club.
Case closed right? I’m wrong and we should leave it there. Well, what if I told you there was more to being a striker than just scoring a lot of goals.
Drogba in many ways was a system striker before system strikers existed. His presence on a football field made the team greater as a result even if the effect can’t be seen years later looking at some statistics on a screen.
But in some ways, you can see it. Drogba allowed for Chelsea to operate with one striker with an attacking three of Florent Malouda, Nicolas Anelka and Frank Lampard in behind. You can see it in this lineup for the 2008/09 FA Cup final:
The 2008/09 season was one of Drogba’s worst in terms of goals scored. He only scored five goals in 33 appearances (24 starts), but Chelsea as a team scored 68, the joint-second highest in the Premier League that season. Nicolas Anelka hit a career-best tally of 19 league goals (winning the Golden Boot) and Frank Lampard hit 12 as Chelsea came 3rd.
This wasn’t Chelsea’s best season in the noughties by any accounts, a year later they would score over 100 goals and win the Premier League under Carlo Ancelotti, but in terms of the performances, it showed what Drogba could offer the team when he wasn’t scoring.
He consistently menaced low-block defences with his physicality and intelligent movement which drew all the attention to him, he allowed others to shine.
Space and time are the most invaluable assets in football. You can have all the talent in the world, but you’ll undoubtedly be able to do more with the ball if you don’t have to worry about another player trying to tackle you; even if it’s only for a few seconds.
In a lot of ways, Drogba embodied this quote by Manchester United midfielder Fred: “I give my blood and my life every time I’m on the pitch. As we say in Brazil, I carry the piano for the artists to play.”
There was a grace and an elegance to how he selflessly approached the role and if a player of his profile was available in the current market; he would be in incredibly high demand (as a United fan he is exactly the sort of striker the club could do with right now).
But like Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, sometimes the supporting act is able to steal the limelight. And for the Ivorian that time came in the ‘big games’.
If I ask the question ‘Who is the ultimate Big Game Player?’ it’s very likely that if you don’t love Cristiano Ronaldo with all your heart and soul that Drogba will be the player you say. This makes this part of the piece a bit redundant however I’m going to try and put into perspective just how good he was.
During his time at Chelsea, Drogba played in 10 finals, winning eight and scoring nine goals in the process (every final they won, he scored in). His most impactful cup-final goal was undoubtedly against Bayern Munich in the 2012 Champions League final. His 88th-minute strike sent the game into extra time and then penalties where he also converted his spot-kick delivering Chelsea their first trophy in the competition.
Below you can see a breakdown of all Drogba’s goals in finals by Scroll.in:
But to limit ‘big games’ just to finals would be underselling Drogba’s abilities. I’ve already mentioned the final, but throughout the 2012 Champions League campaign, when Chelsea need a goal or a big performance; the Ivorian was there.
Needed a win in the final group game against Valencia? Drogba scored a brace.
Needed to comeback against Napoli in the second leg after a poor performance that saw you lose 3–1 in the first leg in Italy? Drogba opened the scoring.
Need to overcome one of the best teams in Europe that has Lionel Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta and David Villa etc. etc. (that Barcelona team was a joke). Drogba scored the only goal in the first leg.
But the question on everybody's lips is probably just ‘How did Drogba do it?’ When 90% of players struggle to keep up their form in bigger games how did Drogba always seem to step up a gear?
Well firstly let’s address the intangible elephant in the room; mentality. Drogba hated losing, his infamous rant to the cameras after Chelsea’s loss to Barcelona in the 2009 semi-finals is probably the most obvious example of this. However it did not end there, Jon Obi Mikel told The Athletic:
“It was chaos in the tunnel and the dressing room afterwards. “Bottles, things flying everywhere. Tables were being smashed. Everyone was shouting and screaming. Mind you, one could say that was normal after that Chelsea team lost games!
“I don’t know about now but losing back then was definitely not acceptable at all…but that was a really crazy night. Drogba lost it on the pitch and then it just carried on from there.”
And it seems that it wasn’t just after games where you felt that losing wasn’t an option for Chelsea. In an interview with Copa90, Frank Lampard spoke about how Drogba was in a dressing room before a final:
“Didier for me was amazing, to have him in your team in a final, you felt Didier in the dressing room before a big game that it was a different Didier, he was like an animal. His preparation, the intensity in his eyes and then he always produced.”
So we’ve talked about his mentality and to be honest, most fans would probably be fine if I stopped it there. Football is all about passion and if that was the answer to ‘Why Drogba was so good in big games?’ I think that most fans would accept that and go on with their days.
But I’ve not taken up a good amount of your Twitter scrolling time just to give you the simple answer. No, I’m going to take up even more of your time to try and offer some different theories as well.
Firstly it’s all about space in the opposition’s half. Low blocks are the staple of any mid-low table team, especially in the Premier League in the Noughties but the further you went up the league the more likely the team you were facing would try and be a bit more adventurous in possession.
Higher defensive lines would create space in behind, and midfielders venturing forward in possession also gave Drogba precious extra unchallenged seconds on the ball. Instead of just holding it up in possession or heading it down for one of the attacking three behind to run onto, he had time on the ball to dribble past defenders or get a shot off.
And this reflects in the stats as well. Against Liverpool, he had 18 goal contributions in 30 games, Arsenal 16 in 15 games and Manchester United 10 in 21 games. Below is a chart from Transfermarkt showing the 20 teams that Drogba scored against the most in all competitions.
However, I think there was a bigger factor at play. And it is as follows: By realising that Didier Drogba wasn’t the most dangerous player on the field the opposition inadvertently made him just that.
As I said before, Drogba’s role in the team was to occupy defenders and keep them busy to create space for players like Lampard, Malouda and Anelka to thrive. Now if you’re facing Chelsea, your logical train of thought would be to then try and stop these players from having too much time on the ball to stop the team’s goal threat.
And that was the biggest mistake a team could make.
To paraphrase a quote by Rorschach in Watchmen (2009), it wasn’t Drogba that was locked in there with the defenders, it was the defenders who were locked in there with him.
By giving Drogba a foot more space or even sometimes taking a defender off him to instead mark one of his teammates, they unleashed a monster.
To come full circle, space and time on the ball are the most invaluable assets in football, but instead of that disappearing completely when the opposition realised how much they were giving to Chelsea’s midfield, Drogba stole them back for himself and used them to devastating effect.
In the air or on the ground, he used every single centimetre to his advantage and in the opposition’s unwittingly signed their own death warrants.
Drogba will undoubtedly go down as one of the Premier League’s best-ever strikers regardless, but I feel like if he existed today when systems are more honed and what players can offer to the game other than scoring is more greatly appreciated he would unanimously be considered a modern great.
And if you don’t want to give Drogba his flowers; you are unconvinced by my arguments and want to name other strikers in your own top five, that’s fine by me. But at least take this away, Complete Forwards are a rare thing to find and if you have one in your team (even if they don’t get you the goals) they are invaluable.
