I love soccer and I find it difficult not to indulge in a little soccer talk after a comment left by one of our readers here yesterday.
My good friend Phil raised two issues. Firstly he said that Drogba is "technically inferior" as a soccer player when compared to the likes of Roger Milla, JJ Okocha, Nwankwo Kanu etc. Then he wondered about Didier's hairstyle saying that because of it, he is a poor ambassador for African football.
It is interesting because this issue of Drogba being "technically inferior" is the problem with African soccer. Africans have no respect for a soccer player who is not also a ball juggler par excellence. Yet ball juggling does not win games. It is goals. And this is a team sport where more and more the skills of "specialists" rather than all-rounders are in high demand. In my opinion, Drogba will go very far because he seems to be the first African to understand what the job of a striker is. A striker is a finisher. His work is to score goals period. It doesn’t matter whether he taps the ball in awkwardly with his nose, as long as it is a goal, he has done the job. The problem with African strikers (And Brazilian strikers before they started playing in Europe and finally saw the light) is that they would rather score a classic goal than a straight forward boring goal. In other words we have no finishers in Africa. Remember Ghana versus Brazil in the last world cup? The Africans completely outplayed the Samba boys but the moment they got in front of the goal the cameramen (sitting close to the corner flags) started taking cover and the TV cameras high above the goal were steered into safety. I kid you not. The shots were mostly heading in the direction of the floodlights and corner flags rather than anywhere near the Brazilian goal.
Drogba is proving to be one of the deadliest finishers in the game today. He is world class and will be talked about long after people have forgotten about all the ball jugglers Africa keeps on churning out.
If African teams want to win the world cup then we must change our approach. Even the kids in the estate need to change from dribbling practice all the time to plenty of shooting practice. We need to start developing more Drogbas.
On the issue of Drogba’s hair style, I believe Phil has a point. Braids or something African would have worked out better. As it is Didier seems to enjoy throwing his head back so that his hair follows suite, which is very mzungu and it seems that he has been admiring the mzungu doing this for a long time. How sad when chocolate is so beautiful and something to be so very proud of.
P.S. Like Phil I also saw this as a battle between Drogba and Wayne Rooney(aka Roooonaldo as the Man U fans lovingly call him). Folks, Drogba won, Africa won!
Phil and Chris are both right and wrong too. The Drog is good in scoring goals and that is what counts in at the end of the game. But that said football derives tha tag of the beautiful game not from the number goals but the science (read floweriness) of goal scoring. And in all honesty Didier is out of this league.
ReplyDeleteGranted, Drogba is the African Rooney-equivalent, stamina and being physical. But they both fade in comparison to Ronaldo, the European JJ-equivalent. Like him hate him Cristiano has some magic in his feet with the ball in between. No wonder he has won all the individual player trophies this year. Drog is good but not brilliant and that is just plain hinesty and not failing to rever a prophet at home, one of our own.
After spending close to £100 to be at Wembley for the untimate football, the quality on display (at least the first half) felt like a ripoff. Sorry Phil you were not alone in mourning the loss. MU is an nstitution and more than a football club (besides a TV station, they have their own credit card). But the perfomance betrayed the status and the Drog may have just save Jose's job. Or may be the old Scot (Fergie) has the African bug of not knowing when to leave - 21 years is a long time and he may have outlived his usefulness as evident during the whitewashing by AC Milan.
I am not a Blues fan but the black (sorry chocolate) faces had some umbilicod connection that left me screaming shamelessly while dressed in red when Grogba scored. Soon we will be both ruling and reigning football when we blend our natural stamina with the required superlative brilliance.
I somewhat agree with Taabu, Phil, and chris. Africa does need more than just dribblers.We ( Africans)need more players like Eto'o. Players who aren't too concerned about dribbling,but they can put themselves in the penalty box by themselves and put free kicks in the back of the net. However, you can teacher the players to just shoot. They have to know how to dribble off the half way line, pass the ball to the forwards, and the forwards finish it off; or else you'll have players doing nothing but passing and shooting from midfield, and not only is this embarrassing to all soccer fans,but it does not got well with the title soccer gets "The Beautiful Game". So ofcourse we need finisher, but that doesn't mean we stop making dribblers.Ether that or we will stop making dribblers, and have a continent full of finishers. We all know you can't we World Cups with just finishers. But what do I know I'm just a Thirteen-year-old Guineaan defender trying to be a pro footballer in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteP.S
My favorite national soccer teams are Brazil, and Guinea. Favorite clubs: Barca F.C, Chelsea
Favorite players: Ronaldinho, Eto'o, Drogba,Henry,Fabien Barthez.
I somewhat agree with Taabu, Phil, and chris. Africa does need more than just dribblers.We ( Africans)need more players like Eto'o. Players who aren't too concerned about dribbling,but they can put themselves in the penalty box by themselves and put free kicks in the back of the net. However, you can teacher the players to just shoot. They have to know how to dribble off the half way line, pass the ball to the forwards, and the forwards finish it off; or else you'll have players doing nothing but passing and shooting from midfield, and not only is this embarrassing to all soccer fans,but it does not got well with the title soccer gets "The Beautiful Game". So ofcourse we need finisher, but that doesn't mean we stop making dribblers.Ether that or we will stop making dribblers, and have a continent full of finishers. We all know you can't we World Cups with just finishers. But what do I know I'm just a Thirteen-year-old Guineaan defender trying to be a pro footballer in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteP.S
My favorite national soccer teams are Brazil, and Guinea. Favorite clubs: Barca F.C, Chelsea
Favorite players: Ronaldinho, Eto'o, Drogba,Henry,Fabien Barthez.
I somewhat agree with Taabu, Phil, and chris. Africa does need more than just dribblers.We ( Africans)need more players like Eto'o. Players who aren't too concerned about dribbling,but they can put themselves in the penalty box by themselves and put free kicks in the back of the net. However, you can teacher the players to just shoot. They have to know how to dribble off the half way line, pass the ball to the forwards, and the forwards finish it off; or else you'll have players doing nothing but passing and shooting from midfield, and not only is this embarrassing to all soccer fans,but it does not got well with the title soccer gets "The Beautiful Game". So ofcourse we need finisher, but that doesn't mean we stop making dribblers.Ether that or we will stop making dribblers, and have a continent full of finishers. We all know you can't we World Cups with just finishers. But what do I know I'm just a Thirteen-year-old Guineaan defender trying to be a pro footballer in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteP.S
My favorite national soccer teams are Brazil, and Guinea. Favorite clubs: Barca F.C, Chelsea
Favorite players: Ronaldinho, Eto'o, Drogba,Henry,Fabien Barthez.