Retired Ivorian Striker, Didier Drogba has always been dubbed as one of the greatest football striker the game has produced.
His senior career started with French club, Le Mans in 1998, but Drogba was announced to the world in his sole season with Marseille in 2003.
He joined Chelsea in 2004, where he became almost an instant hit and he was the Stamford Bridge fans favourite in both his first and second stint at Chelsea until he left finally in 2015.
A typical African striker, physically built and has a stature that can make any defender tremble. Drogba is not just a goal poacher, he is an assist provider, a powerful header, a great pacer and an influencer leader.
However, Drogba cannot be said to be up there with the best strikers the game has produced, perhaps not even close.
In the game of football, goalkeepers are judged by the number of clean sheet produced, playmaker are rated by the number of assists provided and striker are judged based on their goal tally. Drogba goal return in most of his seasons in the Premier League were ridiculously poor.
In his first full season, that’s the 2004/2005 campaign, Drogba only managed a paltry some of 10 goals in 26 games. The second season was slightly better with 12 goals in 29 games.
This season alone, which happens to be his first with the Blues, Tammy Abraham has scored 13 goals in 20 games, already a better tally than the one recorded by Drogba in his first two seasons.
Should Tammy stopped scoring now, his campaign would certainly not be considered as a successful one, yet, Drogba, who scored lesser goals in 7 of his 9 seasons at Chelsea than the number of goals Abraham has managed this season is being hyped to high heaven.
Didier Drogba won his first Golden boot in the 2006/2007 EPL campaign with 20 goals in as much as 34 games, a tally that surely isn’t enough to win the Golden boot in any of the European Top 5 leagues in this era.
The best of Drogba’s seasons was in 2009/2010 EPL title winning season under Carlo Ancelloti. Drogba was in a scintillating form, bagging 29 goals in just 31 starts.
Although, DD is a man for the big games. He scored 9 goals in 9 finals for Chelsea, 5 of which are title winning goals.
He scored 10 goals in as many games against Liverpool, he terrorized Man United defence like Boko Haram terrorized Nigeria and Arsenal is like we used to say, a regular customer for the 2 times African Footballer of the year.
When you’re against a well coordinated team, with a defence line that seems unbreakable, when the task of overcoming your opponent seems to be insurmountable and the opposition goal keeper is in the form of his life and you need someone to break that line with his attacking ingenuity, Drogba is the man to call upon.
But this doesn’t change the fact that Drogba only managed 104 goals in his entire 9 Premier League campaign in England, an average of 12 goals every season, not impressive enough for a First class rated striker.
With 164 goals in 381 games at Chelsea, which makes it an average of 0.43 goals per game and a career league goals of 210 in 497 games, which as well make it a ratio of 0.42 goals per game, as well as 44 goals in 91 Champions League games across all the clubs he played for, Drogba is not in the league of strikers that assure you of scoring at least a goal every two games.
I presumed that Drogba is getting such an undeserved recognition despite his not too impressive statistics because he is, as poor as his stats are, still the best Striker Chelsea has had in the last 2 decades.
While nothing can be taken away from the 4 times EPL winner, it is instructive to note that he is not in the same level with the likes of Robbie Fowler that has 163 goals in 379 PL games, Wayne Rooney with 208 goals in 491 PL games despite playing mostly as a non-striker.
Drogba cannot also not be compared with the likes of Rud Van Nistelrooy that bagged 95 goals in just 150 games nor Van Persie with 144 goals in 280 games. Statistically as well, Drogba is no where near the likes of Thierry Henry, Andy Cole, Michael Owen or even the Belgian Romelu Lukaku.
Even the likes of Harry Kane, Mo Salah and Sergio Aguero that are still very much in the game are better goal converter than Drogba.
When First Class strikers in the world are being mentioned, Drogba name cannot be put in the same breadth with Strikers like Robert Lewandowki, Samuel Eto, David Villa, Karim Benzema, Luiz Suarez, Edison Cavani, Neymar, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Gonzalo Higuain to mention but a few.
Drogba is highly rated because of his presence in important games, his Heroic performance that led to Chelsea’s winning their first ever CL title in Munich, his trophy cabinet, his leadership style on and off the field, his philanthropical contribution to the development of Africa and his role for ending the Civil war in Cote d’Ivoire.
If it is SOLELY about his footballing ability as a Striker, Drogba is hugely overrated.
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Source: Opera News
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