Didier Drogba

Didier Drogba is one of the most talented and also most unpredictable players in English football. Brought to Chelsea by Jose Mourinho after success with Marseille in France, he quickly became one of the most lethal strikers in the Premiership and helped Chelsea to the highest success. But then Mourinho - whom Drogba idolised and whose Foreword reveals the admiration is mutual - departed, and the revolving door of managers that followed saw Drogba disaffected, injured, left out of the side and, the nadir, sent off in the 2008 Champions League final. But now under the new coach Guus Hiddink he is fit again and scoring high-pressure goals and a match for any defence. Characteristically, Drogba first published his autobiography in French, and not for him the empty succession of cliches about a great bunch of lads and a game of ninety minutes. This is a story of growing up in West Africa, then an unsettling emigration to France, and a rise to the highest echelon of football there before Chelsea's money came beckoning. It is a controversial book - Drogba found Chelsea in his first months a thoroughly unwelcoming and lonely place - and about much more than football: in his native Ivory Coast Drogba is a hero and even something of a political campaigner for whom peace and prosperity there is more important than any football bauble. Didier Drogba plays for Chelsea and the Ivory Coast.