On the day Didier Drogba has been inducted into the Premier League Hall of Fame, his longstanding Chelsea team-mate Petr Cech discusses the striker’s impact in English football, analyses his success in big games and explains why their Blues’ careers started on the same path…
I first came across Didier in France when I was at Rennes and he was playing for Guingamp. He was flying, and then he went to Marseille and was top goalscorer in Ligue 1. So when he signed for Chelsea, I knew what a good signing it was.
He was big, he was strong, he was powerful, he could finish every type of ball coming into the box, he could do it himself. He held the ball up, he was dominant in the air. He could take free-kicks. One on one he was good, right foot, left foot. It was perfect. We were getting a really strong player. I knew we had a chance to win something when a player like him was joining.
Similar paths
We arrived at Chelsea the same summer. We were new people. We knew each other because we came from the same league and had played against each other. In France, I had been in the Team of the Year, and he was the top goalscorer. We had a common goal to make our mark again, and to win things. We had the French connection, the language connection. We could help each other. We always got on well because we wanted to do our best to win.
