When Madiba healed Drogba’s broken arm

If Mohamed Salah is looking for inspiration as he hopes to recover quickly from a serious injury ahead of the 2018 World Cup, he could do worse than look to his friend Didier Drogba, and the tale of how the Ivorian came back from a broken arm to play in the SA World Cup in 2010.

Drogba was cast as a serious doubt for the tournament in 2010 after breaking his arm playing for the Elephants in a friendly against Japan. He recovered, however, to play in all three of the Ivory Coast’s games, even scoring against Brazil, though his side exited the tournament at the group stage.

The prolific ex-Chelsea striker did reveal, however, that his recovery from injury was given extra impetus by a great African leader in Nelson Mandela.

“It was ten days before the World Cup, and I was in my hotel room in Switzerland and my phone rang,” said Drogba this weekend, back in South Africa as a guest of Heineken to watch the Uefa Champions League final.

“Someone was talking to me and saying ‘hi my son, how are you?’ I said ‘fine’, he said ‘how is your arm?’, I said ‘painful’ and he said ‘a World Cup in South Africa without you is not a World Cup’. With these words coming from Nelson Mandela himself, my arm was healed!”

One hopes, for Africa’s chances at the 2018 World Cup, that Salah is there, especially after his Champions League dream was left in tatters by Sergio Ramos’ tackle on Saturday. The Egyptian forward, meanwhile, could also turn to Drogba for motivation as to how to turn Champions League final misery into glory.

Drogba was sent off in the 2008 final in Moscow, which Chelsea lost on penalties to Manchester United. In 2012, however, he scored the equaliser and then the winning penalty against Bayern Munich on their own patch as Chelsea finally captured Europe’s greatest club prize.

“I went to the press conference the day before the game (in 2012) and Jupp Heynckes (Bayern coach) was asked ‘how do you handle Didier Drogba’? and he said ‘he is an actor, he should be playing in Hollywood’.

“As an actor, you create a movie – the game is like a movie, there is a lot of drama … when I heard that the night before the game, I thought I need to be a very good actor in that game tomorrow. To score the equaliser and the winning penalty was, for me, good acting!”

At the age of 40, Drogba is still playing, as a player-owner at US second division side Phoenix Rising. Drogba is full of admiration, meanwhile, for Zinedine Zidane, the midfield maestro who has now gone into coaching and won the Champions League three years in a row with Real Madrid.

It does not seem, however, that Drogba wants to go into coaching himself.

“He (Zidane) is on a very good momentum and I think what you see now is what you saw during his playing career. The man is humble, he is a winner, he is a competitor, he doesn’t like losing and that is what I love with him,” said Drogba.

“He took the job, he didn’t really want it and finally he got into it. Winning it as a player, as an assistant coach and as a coach twice, he has already made history and today he has another chance to create more history,” said Drogba on Saturday, and Zidane duly obliged by beating Liverpool 3-1.

“As a coach it is going to be difficult (for me to win the Champions League). I don’t think I have the expertise and the experience that someone like Zidane has. But it is not the only way to win the Champions League … coaching is not the only job you can do when you work for a team. You don’t have to be a manager, you can be a sporting director as well. There are many ways to be connected to a club.”

For now, however, Drogba is happy in the US and has no interest in coaching at a European club.