There have been several breakthrough moments in the long, distinguished career of Didier Drogba, the Galatasaray striker who tonight confronts a poignant crossroads, a game against the club, Chelsea, where most of his successes were concentrated.
He has conceded that the reunion would be emotional, particularly as the man he calls the best coach he worked with, Jose Mourinho, is back in charge at Stamford Bridge. A long-standing rivalry is also revived, as the two finest African strikers of a generation come head to head.
Chelsea’s Samuel Eto’o and his predecessor Drogba have spent more than a decade jousting for prizes in Europe and on their native continent.
They each have been on the podium for African Footballer of the Year eight times with, Eto’o taking top honours four times and Drogba twice.
That makes them a little like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, similarly dominant in modern Ballons d’Or, except that Drogba and Eto’o get along well.
Their professional life journeys have been distinct. Eto’o was a precocious achiever, the youngest player to represent his country, Cameroon, at a World Cup, back in 1998.
He is nearly four years Droba’s junior but was an elite player much earlier. Spotted by Real Madrid at 15, he was jetted to Spain’s most glamorous club as a schoolboy. Drogba, by contrast, was an unusually late-developer.
Born in Ivory Coast, he first moved to France for educational opportunities, not football.
As a player, he worked his way through the ranks of the French provincial game and was in its lower tiers when then-teenage Eto’o made his debut in the European Champions League, which he would win three times.
Drogba has recalled vividly his own sense of progress when, at age 24, he was first bracketed with Eto’o as one of African football’s 21st century stars.
He had scored 17 goals for Guingamp in France’s Ligue 1 in the 2002/03 season and was invited by French TV channel Canal Plus to a ceremony to name the top African players then in Europe.
“I received the bronze ‘Oscar’,” Drogba said, “[Congo and Monaco’s] Shabani Nonda picked up the gold and Samuel, then at Mallorca, the silver.
“Just being in the company of these guys was a huge honour. I felt quite small, even if Africa was starting to find out about me.”
He caught up. In 2004, Drogba joined Marseille and, during the half-time break of a Uefa Champions League group match between Marseille and Porto, he was in the tunnel at the Stade Velodrome when he felt a gentle slap across the back of the head.
It was the young head coach of Porto. “I haven’t got the money to sign you,” smiled Jose Mourinho, looking up at the tall striker, “but don’t you have a cousin in Ivory Coast just like you?”
When Mourinho joined Chelsea the following summer he found access to the right money and Drogba was his priority recruit.
The rest is history: for eight years Drogba dominated English penalty areas and signed off at Chelsea with the goal that won them their only European Cup, in Munich, in 2012.
Drogba never delivered Mourinho, who left London in 2007 before returning in 2013, the Champions League.
Eto’o did, in 2010 at Inter Milan, where the Cameroonian had moved from Barcelona, the site of his serial successes, a magnificent goalscoring record, and, indeed, several fiery clashes against Chelsea. Eto’o v Drogba used to be a consistent subplot in Europe’s top-club competition because Chelsea and Barca kept on meeting.
In Africa, too, they were rivals, notably in the dramatic qualification for the 2006 World Cup, when Cameroon and Ivory Coast contested one place at the finals from a tense group. Drogba’s Ivory Coast made it, beating Eto’s Cameroon in injury time of the last round of games.
Tonight, another chapter.
"Life is strange," said Drogba of his duels with Eto'o, and of Eto'o being at the club Drogba knew for so long as home.
“I knew Samuel would take it when he had the opportunity to go to Chelsea. He enjoyed working with Jose before.”
How highly does Mourinho value each of them? With devilish timing, France’s Canal Plus – the same French channel who once handed silver and bronze prizes to Eto’o and Drogba for their efforts as Africans in Europe – yesterday leaked footage of Mourinho talking earlier this month about his current Chelsea strikers, apparently privately, thinking he was off camera while preparing for a formal interview.
The film shows him saying: “The problem is we lack a striker. I have one, but he’s 32, maybe 35.” He was referencing Eto’o.
The implication could easily be taken that he feels Chelsea are missing the asset they had so consistently, for so long, in Drogba.
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