The Chelsea supporters warmly greeted the return of their former totemic striker but the Galatasaray man is not the formidable force he once was
As is often the case with overblown emotional homecomings, Didier Drogba's return to Stamford Bridge was in the end something of a non-event. Chelsea were simply too slick for a limited Galatasaray team, who were stifled in the centre of midfield and forced into wary retreat by the nimble movement of the excellent Eden Hazard and ever willing Willian as Chelsea ran out 2-0 winners on the night to reach the Champions League quarter-finals. Drogba, wheeled out at this late stage in his career like a first world war field-gun removed from its crate and pointed rather hopefully in the right direction, looked Galatasaray's most obvious threat before kick off, if only for his sense of personal history on this ground. In the event he was muted and more or less anonymous in the second half, disarmed most obviously by his own advancing years, but possibly also, just a little, by what was a carefully-staged homecoming occasion.
José Mourinho can at times be boorish in his pre-match manoeuvres, but he can also be surgically precise, not least when he decides to charm rather than provoke. Shortly before kick-off at Stamford Bridge an emotional Drogba could be heard telling the TV cameras: "It's destiny, I believe in destiny always, to see the fans, to see the, my stadium". At which point it was tempting chalk up, rather wearily, another intangible hit, another pre-match battle ship sunk for Mourinho, who considers these occasions underway the moment he first begins to drawl his delicately couched barbs in the pre-match press conference.
There is of course a genuine warmth here for a player who remains Chelsea's only really outstanding centre-forward £2bn and 10 years down the line from Mourinho 1.0 and the dawning of the age of carbon-football. Others have had their moments in among the Shevchenko-Kezman-Torres persona that has been regenerating itself more or less continuously in a corner of the dressing room like a goal-shy Doctor Who. But Drogba remains the kingpin. With this in mind the ceremonial unsettling of Didier Drogba was always going to be a theme here, and Chelsea duly surrounded his return with a layer of schmaltz, perhaps informed by memories of an obviously disorientating return to Marseilles when he was a Chelsea player.
After an extended pre-match wave-about during which Drogba's greatest Chelsea hits were boomed over the PA system, the teams emerged in earnest on a clear, crisp night, at a Stamford Bridge energised by a boisterous Turkish support who even whistled their own welcome message over the Tannoy and generally created a good-natured double tier of hell-from-hell in the away corner of the ground.
For all that Drogba was only ever a distant menace here, confining himself to a series of central arm-wrestles with John Terry and Gary Cahill, and generally striding about like a half speed Didier Drogba nostalgia act, still capable but lacking his old warrior-like surge. Mourinho's current crop of strikers have suffered a little this season, their apparent inadequacies a recurrent strand in the cocoon of underdog pluck Chelsea's manager has attempted to spin around his team. As far as having no strikers goes three experienced international centre-forwards with four Champions League medals and a World Cup between them is probably at the slightly happier end of things. But then Mourinho has always thrived on a sense of galvanising adversity. The club with no strikers has been his story so far, albeit this was slightly undermined here when Samuel Eto'o, the other great African striker of this generation, scored Chelsea's opening goal after four minutes.
It came at the end of a simple move, Hazard finding space on the left and playing a low pass into Eto'o, who produced a spurt to lose his defender and shot hard and low into the corner off Fernando Muslera's palm. Mourinho – who, it must be emphasised, has no strikers – stayed gloomily seated. It was Eto'o's 33rd goal in this competition, one fewer than Drogba. He looked sprightly in his 85 minutes on the pitch, teasing Aurélien Chedjou with some darting runs in between brief spells spent in the familiar Eto'o "standby setting" whereby he simply stands still and waits for one of Chelsea's attacking midfielders to spark his interest.
There was time for the home crowd to boo the greatest player in Chelsea's history for taking a tumble under a challenge from Terry before Drogba sent a thundering overhead kick into the Matthew Harding stand. Beyond which, the real business of this second leg went on elsewhere. Hazard was the liveliest player on show, on one occasion nudging his way deliciously past Alex Telles with an outrageous waggle of the hips. Otherwise Chelsea were compact and precise from set pieces, as they were in scoring the goal from a corner on 42 minutes that made it 2-0 on the night and 3-1 on aggregate. It might have been a Drogba-era tribute, Frank Lampard's centre headed goalwards by Terry before Cahill thumped it in.
After that the match was effectively over. Throughout the second half Galatasaray's fans were notably more energetic than Roberto Mancini's team, for whom Wesley Sneijder was disappointingly sluggish. Drogba spent much of the last half-hour ambling about the pitch, a mobile waxwork of a once-great centre-forward whose presence at this late stage in Uefa's headline competition offers above all another indication of the widening gap between the top teams in Europe. He was applauded off at the end. For all Mourinho's staged pre-match flirtations, this really was a goodbye. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 hours ago.
As is often the case with overblown emotional homecomings, Didier Drogba's return to Stamford Bridge was in the end something of a non-event. Chelsea were simply too slick for a limited Galatasaray team, who were stifled in the centre of midfield and forced into wary retreat by the nimble movement of the excellent Eden Hazard and ever willing Willian as Chelsea ran out 2-0 winners on the night to reach the Champions League quarter-finals. Drogba, wheeled out at this late stage in his career like a first world war field-gun removed from its crate and pointed rather hopefully in the right direction, looked Galatasaray's most obvious threat before kick off, if only for his sense of personal history on this ground. In the event he was muted and more or less anonymous in the second half, disarmed most obviously by his own advancing years, but possibly also, just a little, by what was a carefully-staged homecoming occasion.
José Mourinho can at times be boorish in his pre-match manoeuvres, but he can also be surgically precise, not least when he decides to charm rather than provoke. Shortly before kick-off at Stamford Bridge an emotional Drogba could be heard telling the TV cameras: "It's destiny, I believe in destiny always, to see the fans, to see the, my stadium". At which point it was tempting chalk up, rather wearily, another intangible hit, another pre-match battle ship sunk for Mourinho, who considers these occasions underway the moment he first begins to drawl his delicately couched barbs in the pre-match press conference.
There is of course a genuine warmth here for a player who remains Chelsea's only really outstanding centre-forward £2bn and 10 years down the line from Mourinho 1.0 and the dawning of the age of carbon-football. Others have had their moments in among the Shevchenko-Kezman-Torres persona that has been regenerating itself more or less continuously in a corner of the dressing room like a goal-shy Doctor Who. But Drogba remains the kingpin. With this in mind the ceremonial unsettling of Didier Drogba was always going to be a theme here, and Chelsea duly surrounded his return with a layer of schmaltz, perhaps informed by memories of an obviously disorientating return to Marseilles when he was a Chelsea player.
After an extended pre-match wave-about during which Drogba's greatest Chelsea hits were boomed over the PA system, the teams emerged in earnest on a clear, crisp night, at a Stamford Bridge energised by a boisterous Turkish support who even whistled their own welcome message over the Tannoy and generally created a good-natured double tier of hell-from-hell in the away corner of the ground.
For all that Drogba was only ever a distant menace here, confining himself to a series of central arm-wrestles with John Terry and Gary Cahill, and generally striding about like a half speed Didier Drogba nostalgia act, still capable but lacking his old warrior-like surge. Mourinho's current crop of strikers have suffered a little this season, their apparent inadequacies a recurrent strand in the cocoon of underdog pluck Chelsea's manager has attempted to spin around his team. As far as having no strikers goes three experienced international centre-forwards with four Champions League medals and a World Cup between them is probably at the slightly happier end of things. But then Mourinho has always thrived on a sense of galvanising adversity. The club with no strikers has been his story so far, albeit this was slightly undermined here when Samuel Eto'o, the other great African striker of this generation, scored Chelsea's opening goal after four minutes.
It came at the end of a simple move, Hazard finding space on the left and playing a low pass into Eto'o, who produced a spurt to lose his defender and shot hard and low into the corner off Fernando Muslera's palm. Mourinho – who, it must be emphasised, has no strikers – stayed gloomily seated. It was Eto'o's 33rd goal in this competition, one fewer than Drogba. He looked sprightly in his 85 minutes on the pitch, teasing Aurélien Chedjou with some darting runs in between brief spells spent in the familiar Eto'o "standby setting" whereby he simply stands still and waits for one of Chelsea's attacking midfielders to spark his interest.
There was time for the home crowd to boo the greatest player in Chelsea's history for taking a tumble under a challenge from Terry before Drogba sent a thundering overhead kick into the Matthew Harding stand. Beyond which, the real business of this second leg went on elsewhere. Hazard was the liveliest player on show, on one occasion nudging his way deliciously past Alex Telles with an outrageous waggle of the hips. Otherwise Chelsea were compact and precise from set pieces, as they were in scoring the goal from a corner on 42 minutes that made it 2-0 on the night and 3-1 on aggregate. It might have been a Drogba-era tribute, Frank Lampard's centre headed goalwards by Terry before Cahill thumped it in.
After that the match was effectively over. Throughout the second half Galatasaray's fans were notably more energetic than Roberto Mancini's team, for whom Wesley Sneijder was disappointingly sluggish. Drogba spent much of the last half-hour ambling about the pitch, a mobile waxwork of a once-great centre-forward whose presence at this late stage in Uefa's headline competition offers above all another indication of the widening gap between the top teams in Europe. He was applauded off at the end. For all Mourinho's staged pre-match flirtations, this really was a goodbye. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 hours ago.