Chelsea FC’s 50 Greatest Players Of All-Time
4. Didier Drogba: 2004-12, 2014-15
Didier Drogba was the 3rd musketeer, after Lampard and Terry, for Chelsea over the last decade. One of Jose Mourinho’s first signings, arriving from Marseille for £24m as a 26-year-old, he was the spearhead (pun intended) of the team in nearly all its recent successes.
In a fairytale of sorts, he departed the club on a high after its first ever Champions League triumph, scoring two of the most important goals in our club’s history – one in regulation time and one in the penalty shootout in the famous European final against Bayern Munich.
RELATED: Didier Drogba’s Top 10 Chelsea FC Goals
In a bigger fairytale of sorts, he returned to the club in 2014, with Jose Mourinho at the helm, again, to win his and the club’s 4th Premier League title. Now, in what appears to be a much bigger fairytale, he is on the verge of a yet another return to the club, albeit in a different role.
Two of the most standout images of Drogba’s Chelsea career are his emotional goodbye to the club in Munich and his impassioned protestations against the referee after that infamous match vs Barcelona in 2009, one that gets every single Chelsea fan’s blood to boil like molten lava.
In a stellar nine-year Chelsea career, Drogba has won 14 trophies and scored 164 goals for the club in all competitions, making him the 4th highest goalscorer for the club. His incredible record of 10 goals in 10 finals leading to 10 trophies has led to him often being referred to as “the ultimate big game player”.
As if he needed to further endear himself, he would, time & again, stick it to Arsenal and Arsene Wenger, scoring an astonishing 13 goals in 14 matches against our much hated crosstown rivals turning into their biggest nemesis in recent times.
Despite playing across the world in China, Turkey and America post-Chelsea, each time, like a homing pigeon, King Didier inevitably seems to be finding his way back to Stamford Bridge. We fervently hope his second homecoming will be a permanent and fruitful one for all of us, especially for the King himself.
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