From simulation to stimulation, Didier Drogba played the role of pansy and enforcer

 
Chelsea's wrecking ball: Didier Drogba celebrates with Roberto Di Matteo
15 March 2012

Didier Drogba walked off the pitch at Stamford Bridge last night waving a blue flag above his head with such pride and fervour it seemed he might spontaneously combust. The crowd before him roared with approval. He roared back at them, in vindication.

For two frantic hours against Napoli, Drogba had been Chelsea’s wrecking ball: battering at the crumbling brickwork of the Italians’ defence, punching holes until the whole edifice finally collapsed. He threw everything he had — not all of it pretty — into a terrific Champions League tie, and won. He was temperamental but magnificent — the latter outweighing the former. As his flag fluttered in the floodlit night air he deserved his moment of adulation.

It is a matter of days — 11, to be exact — since Drogba was an uncomfortable member of the albatrossed Andre Villas-Boas experiment. Unwanted and under-indulged by the manager, he spent much of this season sullen and exasperated, fulfilling Villas-Boas’s judgement that he was over the hill and ripe for a sale.

Last night, though, Drogba showed that he is still capable, when he feels up to it, of everything that between 2006-10 placed him among the best strikers in the world: good enough in 2007 to be rated alongside Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho in the FifPro World XI. He looked sharp, fast, aggressive, indomitably strong and — most valuably of all — capable of moments of outrageous deceit and blatant cheating that drove Napoli’s players and fans to paroxysms of self-defeating rage.

Every trick in the Drogba playbook was wheeled out last night. When a Chelsea attack broke down early in the first half he was to be seen sitting on the turf holding his foot like he’d had every metatarsal splintered with a sharp stiletto. The severity of his ‘injury’ waxed and waned as he watched play unfold downfield and he amped up his writhing and moaning to attempt maximum referee-distraction when Napoli’s counter-attacking move seemed to be most threatening.

Then, having picked himself up from this bout of hilarious play-acting, he switched gears. On 29 minutes he bullocked through a well-peopled penalty area to direct Ramires’s cross with a firm downward header into the Napoli goal. From simulation to stimulation: it was a simple, brilliantly taken goal.

As the match developed, Drogba continued to play his contrary role as both pansy and enforcer.

One minute he was showing his still-astonishing upper body strength, toppling defenders with a mere squeeze of his latissimus dorsi, before turning with the ball and running at goal; the next he was crumpling to the ground at the faintest touch — or even less — to con his way to a free kick.

After 80 minutes he was berating the fourth official over some disputed call, vibing ‘over-emotional Naomi Campbell arguing the toss with a hotel clerk’; but in the gaps between the nonsense he was falling back into space behind the substitute Fernando Torres, to battle for possession with Napoli’s midfield.

As extra-time progressed, and Chelsea fought their way to a famous win, Drogba turned on another of his trademark moves.

With the crowd tiring as quickly as the players, he was frequently gesturing to them, hands behind his ears, then whirring through the air, imploring the Bridge to keep believing, keep bellowing, keep the game’s heart beating. When the final whistle went, the Ivorian, ecstatic and exhausted, was among the first to celebrate with Roberto Di Matteo.

As I walked home last night, west along the south bank of the Thames, a mile or so from Stamford Bridge, I looked over the water to see an eerie halogen glow radiating from the ground. The lights were still burning on Chelsea, over a pitch that had seen a minor footballing miracle. It was easy to imagine that some part of the iridescence was coming from the inimitable Didier Drogba, burning fiercely in the Spring night — not quite finished, not quite yet.

Follow me on Twitter @dgjones

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