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A tale of two centre-forwards: would it be as simple as that on a night when the ability to convert one of the few chances created, or even miss it, could easily decide who joined Manchester United in Moscow for the Champions League final?
So step forward Didier Drogba and Fernando Torres, two of the most lethal strikers in world football. A great chance for one or other to provide the final push. A great chance, too, to compare the wholly different qualities of the men from Chelsea and Liverpool. And what do you know?
Both delivered the goods on a night of nerve-shredding drama at Stamford Bridge. First Drogba, then Torres. Grand reputations were more than vindicated as both strikers contributed to a quite special match.
Don't get him angry. You won't like him when he's angry. Rafa Benitez, surely, had contemplated that possibility when he singled out Drogba before this second leg, having suggested in no uncertain terms that Chelsea's big tough centre-forward, to paraphrase a little, tends to fall over at the slightest touch. Perhaps Liverpool's manager thought it a risk worth taking, hoping that the criticism would destabilise Chelsea's biggest attacking threat rather than inspire him into producing a match- winning performance.
Typically, the answer came in the form of his goals, the main currency of all the best forwards. Drogba stepped forward first to get the home fans believing that this was their year, that a trip to Russia's capital lay just round the corner. Yet, when Saloman Kalou raced free down the left and curled in a shot that Pepe Reina beat away, Drogba didn't seem to have made up the necessary ground to compete for the bits. Fortunately for him, though, the goalkeeper's parry skidded directly into his path and a devastating swing of the right boot saw both John Arne Riise and Reina beaten at the near post.
Ecstatic scenes
There were ecstatic scenes of jubilation from Chelsea's No 11. Wheeling away, eyes wild with triumph, his goal celebration ended with a flamboyant knee slide across the sodden turf right in front of the chastened Benitez. Talk about producing when it really mattered. Talk about answering your critics in the best imaginable way. In his entire career, Drogba, at that point, had never scored a more important goal. That's not to say, of course, that Benitez didn't have a point in highlighting the player's unpleasant diving antics.
Drogba might have no equals as a rampaging, fearsome front-runner who can scare the living daylights out of defenders through sheer muscle alone, but no-one compares either as a tempestuous drama queen, a one-man show that, if you like that sort of thing, rarely fails to give value for money. Torres, on the other hand, prefers to go about his business in a more understated and, to be honest, more civilised way, rarely indulging in embarrassing play-acting.
Getting nervous
Not only that, he's the kind of player opponents should start to get nervous about when he sees as little of the ball as he did at times here. In fact, after allowing the quick-witted Spaniard an early sight of goal, John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho seemed to have done everything right to subdue the hit-man. Even Drogba found time to poke the ball away from under the nose of Torres. But then Yossi Benayoun slipped through a brilliant ball Torres couldn't pass up. "El Nino's" 31st goal of the season couldn't have carried much more weight. The cream had risen to the top of this bubbling milkshake. Two thoroughbreds had shown why they are valued so much.
-The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2008
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