Didier Drogba- Player Profile - Part 1
Most of the teams that compete in the UEFA Champions League and other such competitions operate with a lone striker. It is considered to be a positive point that one striker is playing for the club, while the midfield is busy providing him with the ball to score goals.
However, many think that it is not all up to that ‘lone striker’ who is playing up front, but more on the players that play around him. If they are able to provide him with good volleys, through balls and long balls, only then can a striker manage to score goals for his club. The 4-4-2 formation is now dead as top managers’ don’t prefer playing in this style anymore. Chelsea’s Ivory Coast striker, Didier Drogba, has proved to the world that 4-4-2 is not the key to success because a single striker can easily take care of the opposition defence. Drogba is one of those players who can single handedly run through any defence to score goals. He showed the world that sometimes less can be more.
Drogba has all the attributes a striker needs and also the ability to be the focal point of the team. He has the perfect strength and power to be a striker, which allows him to easily take possession of the ball from opponents. All in all he is a perfect striker because of his physical presence and devastating finishes. He can make a run forward and easily run down his marker to score goals. He is not only a usual goal scorer, he can even score from the borderline, outside the 18 yard box as he challenges Frank Lampard when it comes down to penalty taking. Last season, it was him who took over and scored the second penalty to score a hat trick in the last game.
The Ivory Coast international had a brilliant time last year in the English Premier League, as he managed to score the most goals during the season. With the help of his fabulous strikes he was able to bag himself the golden boot award for the second time in four seasons. His goal scoring form not only won him the golden boot for the second time, it also helped his team win the 2009-10 English Premier League.
Drogba’s free-scoring style of play comes from his attitude towards football; he craves to find the net and treats goal scoring like a side project. The Ivoirian’s presence in the starting 11 is very important and essential for his club as he is the man who makes things tick for Chelsea up front.
The Chelsea star is 32 years old and he just can’t stop scoring goals for club and country. This season he managed to score 37 goals in only 44 matches for Chelsea in all competitions. The strike rate of the African was simply astonishing and that is the reason why he is such an important player for his club. Throughout his run with Chelsea, only manager Luiz Felipe Scolari, thought that Drogba was not giving the team an advantage. Scolari though was later forced to depart, but his replacement Carlo Ancelotti did not make a similar error in judgment.
Didier Drogba is not only a forward player, he also has a psychological advantage in the position that he is playing, because most of the defenders usually try to mark him while his team-mates look to take advantage and score. Defenders that are extremely powerful are the only ones that are more effective against Drogba, while others simply fear the African Elephant.
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