Didier Drogba scored 10 goals in 10 finals and earned a big-game reputation
Didier Drogba scored in ten finals out of ten, including four FA Cup finals, and in the 2012 Champions League final against Bayern Munich he equalised in the 88th minute, then struck the winning shootout penalty. Remarkably, he never went to a football academy and did not turn professional until 21.
Born in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in 1978, Drogba was sent to France at five to live with his uncle, a professional footballer, but grew homesick and returned. His mother nicknamed him Tito, after the Yugoslav leader she admired. When his parents lost their jobs, he went back to his uncle, and the family eventually settled in Antony in 1993. At Le Mans, where he also studied accountancy, injuries and the training load overwhelmed him at first; a former coach said it took four years before he could train daily and play weekly. The birth of his son Isaac in 1999, the year he signed professionally, was the moment he said straightened him out.
His rise was sudden. Guingamp bought him for £80,000 midway through the 2001–02 season, and the next year he scored 17 league goals. Marseille signed him in June 2003, and he won the league's player of the year award with 19 league goals, then presented his shirt to the city's basilica, Notre-Dame de la Garde, where it hangs framed. José Mourinho made him a priority, and in July 2004 Chelsea paid £24 million, a club record.
At Chelsea he helped win the club's first league title in 50 years in his debut season and a second straight title the next. In 2006–07, wearing the number 11 shirt, he scored 33 goals, won the Golden Boot and was named African Footballer of the Year, an award he collected again in 2009. In March 2012 he became the first African to reach 100 Premier League goals. He later played in China and Turkey, and joined the Premier League Hall of Fame in 2022.
For Ivory Coast he scored a national record 65 goals in 105 games, captaining the team from 2006 and scoring its first goal at its first World Cup that year. He also took them to continental finals in 2006 and 2012, losing both on penalties. He became a UN Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador in 2007.
Source: Didier Drogba
