Drogba Insists He is Leaving
By dixon9
January 7 2008
Drogba isn’t demonstrating the greatest of tact when it comes to dealing with the press and the PR consequences when it comes to his club and its fans. We’ve been through more than enough in recent months what with the Mourinho exit and a catastrophic run of key injuries - his latest comments don’t help a mood that is slowly improving after an excellent run of results over the Christmas period.
On the eve of his departure for the African Cup of Nations (ACN), our best (and arguably the world’s best) centre forward saw fit to say the following:
"It comes from me, I said what I am thinking, that I wanted to leave.”
"The problem is that I say that I want to leave since two or three years.”
"Mourinho's departure didn't help, to the contrary it made my desire to leave even bigger.”
Now I for one more than understand his feelings re the Mourinho issue and the dubious and sombre circumstances which surround the departure of our best manager in history.
Mourinho´s influence was extremely important to Drogba. During the negotiations to sign the Ivorian Coast forward, Drogba has since commented that he had no thoughts or intentions of joining Chelsea but once he spoke to Mourinho “...it was in the pocket!”. It was reported that Drogba broke down in tears when Mourinho said his goodbyes to the squad.
Since then, his form has nevertheless been magnificent and only interrupted by injury.
Many of us believed (and perhaps still believe) that there is still time to swing Drogba´s mood – some ego massaging and new contract would probably be more than enough – after all, this isn’t the first time he has come out with negative remarks to the press and he is very sensitive.
The influence of Steve Clarke and Ten Cate could be important and the quality of any January signings to help fill out a depleted squad may also help. However, if Drogba´s latest comments are confirmed to be accurate then the importance of signing 1 or even 2 high quality forwards would take on a much more significant urgency for this and the next transfer window.
Of course, this latest Drogba outburst may well have been the result of a clever reporter asking him about the comments he made after the exit of Mourinho and how he felt THEN. Whatever the truth I’m sure an announcement will be made by the club or the player in the next 24 hours.
Drogba still has 3 years or so to run on his contract and the betting is that he will join Mourinho at AC Milan in the summer and it is the following part of his comments that make me feel that this could very well already be mapped out:
"I am not going to speak about my next club and my major objective is the ACN and winning all the interests we have to win when I'll return for Chelsea."
“I am not going to speak about my next club” – bad use of English phrasing or has he let the cat out of the bag?
It doesn’t look good.
The Ivory Coast striker said: "Any striker in my situation would be really happy to get the chance to play alongside Samuel Eto'o.
"I don't see why it should not happen. It would be something exceptional but Barcelona need to get their chequebook out.
"The things I love about Samuel are his pace, his instinct for goals, his running and simply the fact he is indispensable to Barcelona.
"When Chelsea played a Barca side that was without him, we knew we'd have the game won even before we took the field.
"Every Chelsea player would say the same and Jose Mourinho as well. When he learned that Samuel wasn't playing against us in October 2006 he told us: 'We've won.'"
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"It is born out of hypocrisy and fundamental insecurity. There have been two kids on the block for the past 12 years. Suddenly, there is a third and that one is threatening to be more successful than the others and they don’t like it." P Kenyon.