For April 18th I'm going back 12 years to 2009 to yet another FA Cup Semi-Final tie.
Love it or loathe it, thanks to the Premier League, we've been lucky in this country to see an array of the world's finest players. Not all of them you understand but probably more than the average top flight fan would get to see in Germany, Italy, France or Spain. You will often hear pundits arguing that what we're watching is "the Best League in the World". Now I'm not going to offer an opinion on that subject because, frankly, I haven't seen enough of what's on offer in other countries to be able to make a judgement. Nor have the pundits! Perhaps it's not surprising that they "big up" their employer's televisual wares however. I would conceded that what we're watching is one of the top leagues in the world. This clash in the FA Cup brought together two of the Premier League's so-called "Big 6".
One of the world's finest players that appeared in this game and indeed won it for Chelsea was Didier Drogba. I cannot recall ever seeing a better striker than Didier. He was born in the Ivory Coast and, according to wikipedia, his mother nicknamed him Tito after the former leader of Yugoslavia who "she admired greatly" (ask yourself who did your own mother admire greatly and what would your nickname have been?). His early years in the game came in France playing for Le Mans, Guingamp and then Marseille whom he helped to reach the 2004 UEFA Cup Final. Newly minted with Roman Abramovic's vast wealth, Chelsea made Drogba one of their early marquee signings paying Marseille £24 Million for his services. It was the start of a long and successful career at Chelsea for Drogba and he finished his second spell at the club in 2015 having scored 164 goals in 381 games for the Blues. During his time at the club he won the Premier League and FA Cup four times each, the League Cup three times and, in 2012, he won Chelsea the Champions League against Bayern Munich with a dramatic late equaliser and then scored the winning penalty in the shootout . He always seemed to score in the biggest games. He is also the all-time top scorer for Ivory Coast with 65 goals in 105 Internationals for "the Elephants".
Before a capacity crowd of 88,103 Arsene Wenger's Arsenal actually got the opening goal in this game through Theo Walcott. Arsenal had a top class striker of their own in Robin van Persie as well as legend in his own opinion Nicklas Bendtner who came on for Emmanuel Adebayor late in the game. Guus Hiddink's Chelsea equalised thanks to Florent Malouda leaving the sides level at half time and setting up the tie perfectly for the coup de gras from Drogba with just six minutes remaining. Chelsea deserved their win and their place in the following month's Final against Everton which they would go on to win 2-1. Oh and Drogba scored in that game too!
CRB Match No. 1695
(Excuse the commentary on the footage but I can't find an English version)
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