Chelsea FC: Why Didier Drogba Is Still Vital to Blues' Success

Wednesday night at Stamford Bridge was a vintage night for being vintage.

Over the course of 120 thrilling minutes, Chelsea slammed four goals past Napoli, overturned a two-goal first-leg deficit, secured their biggest win to date in the post-Andre Villas-Boas era and did it all with a team that bore a striking resemblance to the title-winning sides of more than half a decade ago.

And no one enjoyed rolling back the years more than Didier Drogba.

Not John Terry, who nonetheless proved his worth with a vital headed goal and who with each passing post-AVB appearance looks more like a player-coach in all but in name. (Though to be fair, with more than 13 years of service to the club, the 31-year-old central defender has earned the right to do almost whatever he wants along the touchline.)

Nor even Frank Lampard, who banged home the penalty that pulled Chelsea level on aggregate, and miraculously played two hours of football on those rusty and disused 33-year-old legs.

No, it was Drogba, Chelsea's powerfully ageless 34-year-old Ivorian, who turned in a trademark performance so characteristically classic that he even managed to anger half the footballing world with a blatant dive and cheeky peek-a-boo.

Yeah, that's Didier Drogba alright: Equal parts power, skill, fearlessness, gamesmanship and pure cheek. It's a combination that's produced more than 100 Premier League goals since 2004, and even now it might just be potent enough to propel Chelsea's unlikely Renaissance under Roberto Di Matteo.

Under Villas-Boas, it was a wildly different story, of course. Like his fellow golden-oldie Frankie Lampard, Drogba played only a limited role in the young Portuguese manager's plans, and as the winter transfer window heated up, Drogba's future seemed to lie anywhere but in West London.

Based on Wednesday's evidence, though, letting Drogba go this past winter would have been a profound mistake—and keeping him past the current season might be more important than anyone at Chelsea previously thought.

Like Lampard, Drogba played all 120 minutes against Napoli, but unlike any of his teammates or any other player on the pitch, Drogba wielded an influence that shaped the outcome.

His most conspicuous contribution came quickly, a cannonball header from the edge of the 6-yard box that created the early lead Chelsea craved. But that was hardly all.

With his unique physical traits and skill-set, Drogba gave Chelsea an exceptional defensive contribution while linking his own team's attacks and providing a big, strong target.

For Andre Villas-Boas' Chelsea, most of the previous sentence was missing, as ZonalMarking hints:

"This was the old-style Drogba–the target of route one balls and crosses compared to the neater, tidier link-up man Andre Villas-Boas wanted."

Drogba organized attacks in the "old-style" all night, and when Chelsea's vital fourth goal finally arrived deep in extra time, the Ivorian predictably played a starring role. Branislav Ivanovic's name appears on the scoresheet, but Drogba's fingerprints were all over the place.

In classic center-forward style, Drogba set the table in the absence of a scoring chance of his own, first employing power (receiving the ball on the edge of the box and holding off his defender), and then applying precision (deftly turning and supplying the final pass).

It was a critical contribution, and for Drogba, it was hardly the first.

The Ivorian has long had a knack for scoring crucial goals at crucial times, and Wednesday's vintage performance was only surprising in the sense that he hadn't had the opportunity more often under Villas-Boas.

This latest vintage production brought Chelsea their biggest win of the season to date, and for some, it showed that Drogba still has a claim as his club's most important player. When he plays like that, it's hard to disagree.

As Football365 writes:

"

It isn't just his qualities as an attacker—his defensive work is brilliant, both at the back and up front, where he harries and bullies defenders into making mistakes, his link-up play remains terrific and he creates as many chances for others as he puts away himself. Against Napoli, he won twice the number of balls in the air of the whole Napoli defence and wing-backs combined, he had more shots than anyone else in the Chelsea side and only Juan Mata made more 'key passes.'

"

For Chelsea and Drogba, the key phrase here is "key passes." Wednesday's memorable fightback wasn't just about how much possession they had, but rather what they did with it, and even at 34, Drogba did more with the ball than men 10 years his junior could manage.

As Chelsea's post-AVB rebuilding project continues, the club's architects—whoever they might be—would do well to keep Drogba's age-defying qualities in mind.