Even off the pitch, Drogba takes centre stage

FROM VILLAIN of the piece in Moscow to crusader against injustice at Stamford Bridge is a 12-month journey only Didier Drogba has the necessary chutzpah to undertake.

The year is 2008 and Drogba slaps Manchester United’s Nemanja Vidic to be sent off in extra-time in a Champions League final. The penalty the Chelsea striker was scheduled to take in the shoot-out falls instead to a defender, John Terry, who misses. The year is 2009 and we go over now at the end of Chelsea-Barcelona to a party political broadcast by the Didier Drogba party. The message: “It’s a disgrace.” Thank you and good night.

As well as presenting a neat encapsulation of the many contradictions that make up Didier Yves Drogba Tebily (31), Wednesday night’s cabaret of fury may have had the paradoxical effect of shifting the club’s resident Trouble Man closer to the hero end of the spectrum for the average Chelsea fan. Since his arrival from Marseille in 2005 there have been many Drogba “moments” that were meant to define his time in England.

The Vidic slap turned many Chelsea supporters off him. The experience of staggering out of a Russian stadium at 2am while United paraded the European Cup inside was rendered intolerable, for many, by Drogba’s willingness to pursue a private feud at such a heavy cost to his team. Sympathy, therefore, was running low when Luiz Felipe Scolari preferred Nicolas Anelka and demoted Drogba to a walk-on role. Only when Guus Hiddink restored him to the starting XI in his first game in charge, against Aston Villa, did the old barnstorming Drogba re-emerge.

Barcelona's victory brought forth his most infamous TV interview since he told Match of the Day, "sometimes I dive, sometimes I stand," which he later retracted. This time he cupped a Sky TV camera in his hands and issued a Premier League star's version of J'Accuse.Drogba has always displayed a fine persecution complex and this time he could claim cosmic justification. There could be no more toxic provocation than a referee rejecting four Chelsea penalty appeals and Hiddink replacing him on 72 minutes with Juliano Belletti.

David Attenborough, on tiger watch, would appreciate the proximity of the Chelsea press box to the dug-outs and the pitch. Everything is visible in HD. From there it was obvious that Drogba objected to being replaced by a more defensive team-mate. Was he injured? He spends so much time impersonating an Apache who has been shot in an early Western that you can never be quite sure.

Either way his displeasure was apparent as the game entered its final, hyper-dramatic phase. After Andres Iniesta had equalised, and Michael Ballack had seen Chelsea’s second hand-ball appeal turned down, Drogba responded to the final whistle by marching on to the pitch in his flip-flops.

He shouted and jabbed a finger at the referee, Tom Henning Ovrebo, in a manner that will doubtless attract censure from Uefa, though Ballack’s man-handling of the man in charge is a more serious offence. Its response to Drogba’s outburst on live TV will be shaped by whether it considers “it’s a disgrace” to be an opinion, allowable under EU law, or takes a dimmer view of Richard Keys having to apologise to viewers for the accompanying swearword, for which Drogba apologised himself yesterday in a club statement.

An aspect of Drogba’s conduct that was not widely reported was his disregard for colleagues, club officials and stewards who attempted to save him from himself. Florent Malouda, an old friend from French football, tried and failed. But support for him in the immediate post-match inquest was unstinting. “I’m fully behind Didier and the way he reacted,” Terry said. Hiddink also said he would “support” his player.

In the game Drogba was pulled and chopped down by Eric Abidal in the penalty area but the offence was ignored by Ovrebo. He also let slip at least one gilded chance to put the game beyond Barcelona. Minor salvation is on offer in the FA Cup final against Everton before the hurdy-gurdy of transfer speculation linking him with a move to Italy or Spain starts up again.

Jose Mourinho said of Drogba: “He is the kind of player I would tell ‘With you I could go to every war’.” He can start a good one too.

Guardian Service