If Fernando Torres is wallowing in self-pity, he should make time to speak to his Chelsea team-mate - and very occasional strike partner - Didier Drogba. The Ivory Coast striker knows from bitter personal experience that even the most excruciating of misses in front of goal pales into insignificance when set alongside tragedies suffered off the field.
Drogba’s Chelsea career has been winding down since Torres’s £50 million move from Liverpool in January, yet despite slipping down Andre Villas-Boas’s pecking order, his overriding feeling when out on the pitch is one of liberation.
For much of the past 12 months his thoughts have been occupied by the civil war that has raged throughout his homeland after disputed elections last November, claiming the lives of 3,000 people and causing the displacement of 500,000 others.
As with most Ivorians, Drogba has had family and friends killed in a bloody conflict that has divided households, while his father’s village of Guiberoua was burnt down by forces supporting Alassane Ouattara, the newly elected president, because he shares the same Bete tribal background as the outgoing president, Laurent Gbagbo.
It is difficult to convey the immensity of Drogba’s status in Ivory Coast, where he is revered as a sporting god and respected as a national figurehead, which is why he was asked to join the newly formed Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose 11 members were appointed by Ouattara to promote a sustainable peace. Drogba attended his first meeting of the commission in London this week, meeting compatriots as diverse as King Desire Amon Tanoe, of the Nzima ethnic group, Catholic Archbishop Paul-Simeon Ahouanan of Bouake and Cheick Boikary Fofana, the Muslim High Council of Imams president. With his imposing physique and slow, studied speech patterns, Drogba possesses statesman-like qualities, certainly more than is evident during his occasional petulant outbursts on the pitch.
Drogba admits that he is no politician, but offers a clear message that is stark in its simplicity. “I lost some friends and some people from my family — uncles and aunties — in Ivory Coast,” he said.
“I have a lot of family members who lost a lot more, but more material things. What I say to them is we’re all lucky we’re still alive. You can get these material things back, but we are lucky to be alive and have to try and change this situation. It was not a difficult decision for me to get involved. I love my country and was devastated by the war. I’ve seen Ivory Coast in its best days and it’s a wonderful country. To see that people could not even look at each other and were hiding from their friends — from their friends! — was horrible.”
Drogba is anxious not to appear as a victim, but in addition to the loss of loved ones, he has been forced to walk a difficult path requiring delicate diplomacy. As a result of his position, he has been unable to speak his mind, and even now, with the fighting over and new elections planned for the end of the year, he does not state where his true sympathies lie.
In a country historically divided between rebel strongholds in the north and a government-controlled south, it has been widely assumed that his background in the Fromager region would lead him to be allied to Gbagbo, but Drogba has always stressed his bipartisanship, a difficult task made easier by his primary residence being in London.
