ZLATAN VS DIDIER Who Is The Greatest?

 

 

Goal compare the Chelsea great and the Paris Saint-Germain superstar

It's been a big week for Didier Drogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, for two very different reasons.
The duo are regarded as some of the finest strikers of their generation, and while there are only four years between them, they are currently playing very different roles within the footballing stratosphere.
Drogba, who turned 38 on Friday, is beginning his first full Major League Soccer campaign with Montreal Impact, having joined the club last year.
The Impact finished third in the Eastern Conference last season, and continued their current campaign with a superb 3-0 home victory over New York Red Bulls on Saturday, having beaten Vancouver Whitecaps 3-2 in their league opener last weekend.
Zlatan, by contrast, was influential earlier this week as Paris Saint-Germain dumped Chelsea out of the Champions League, scoring a goal and contributing an assist, and will win his fourth consecutive Ligue 1 title on Sunday if PSG beat Troyes.
The pair have illuminated European football and engraved their names in world football folklore with their individual and team achievements.
But who's the greater of the two?

Born in Abidjan, Drogba was part of Chelsea’s transformation into a European football powerhouse and the club’s history cannot be discussed without mentioning his name as well as his broader individual contribution to the English game.
He was also influential in the development of Chinese football, gracing the Super League with Shanghai Shenhua.
Following his efforts in China, Drogba graced the Turkish league at Galatasaray and was an instant success.
Ibrahimovic is a household name in Italian football, turning out for AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus. He joins eight other players (Andrea Pirlo, Christian Vieri, Edgar Davids, Patrick Vieira, Roberto Baggio, Aldo Serena, Enrico Candiani and Guiseppe Meazza) as the only figures to have turned out for all three Italian giants.
His individual record is simply staggering.

The Malmo native has won league titles in four of the five European leagues he has played in, starting with Ajax in the Dutch Eredivisie, adding Serie A titles, La Liga and Ligue 1 crowns.
He has four Serie A titles won with Inter Milan and AC Milan while two others won with Juventus were revoked due to a match-fixing scandal, which rocked Italian football in 2006.
Adding the two Scudetti which Juventus were stripped of, the Swedish forward had won five straight league titles, helping Inter claim three others.
This was accompanied with being named Serie A Footballer of the Year in the 2008 and 2009 seasons before he joined Barcelona and upon his return to Italy, after a turbulent spell in Catalonia, he picked up where he left off with another Footballer of the Year prize in 2011.
The 34-year-old Swede was also two-time top scorer in Serie A, making comparisons with Dutch legend, and another elegant hitman, Marco van Basten inevitable.
French football has also enjoyed the magic of ‘Ibracadabra’, and during his time as PSG's franchise player he's twice claimed Ligue 1's top scorer award and been named the division's best player.

It took five years and 211 games for Portugal international Pauleta to score 109 goals for PSG and become the club’s all-time leading scorer, but Ibrahimovic needed just 137 games to break that record altogether.
While these achievements making for a fascinating reading, Drogba’s record is equally enthralling.
Four Premier League titles with Chelsea came with the Ivorian playing an instrumental role, securing them with more than 25 goals in each campaign. In the process, he helped establish the London club as a global football force.
Drogba might not have been honoured as the best player in his career in England, but a staggering 104 Premier League goals in 254 Chelsea games has made the striker the only African to reach a century of strikes in the Premier League.
The only time he failed to reach the 20-goal mark in a single season was in the 2007-2008 campaign when he managed just 19.

Just like Ibrahimovic, Drogba leaves a trail of over-achievement wherever he goes.
He took claimed the Ligue 1 best player award during his time with Marseille, attracting the interest of Chelsea, and shone in Turkey with Galatasaray, winning the Super Lig title and the 2013 Turkish Football Player of the Year award.
While Ibrahimovic has never won the European Player of the Year, Drogba has twice been named Africa’s best, in both 2006 and 2009.
Although the Swede’s trophy haul is impressive, it lacks one crucial piece of silverware, the Uefa Champions League.
The trophy has eluded the Swede despite topping the assists charts in the 2012-13 campaign, although he will surely be desperate to end his career at PSG with the award later this year.
Zlatan joins a list including the likes of Ronaldo, Fabio Cannavaro, Diego Maradona, Gianluigi Buffon, Patrick Vieira and Michael Ballack as celebrated footballers who have never laid their hands on the sought-after trophy.

Can Zlatan end his time at PSG with a European Cup?

That differentiates Zlatan from Drogba, who helped Chelsea defeat Bayern Munich by scoring a late equalising goal in the 2012 final to send the contest to a penalty shoot-out, in which he scored the winning spot kick.
While both players have enjoyed rich careers at club level, they have achieved precious little with their respective national teams.
Ibrahimovic took Sweden to the Fifa World Cup twice, in 2002 and 2006, but success has evaded him on both occasions, with the European nation struggling to replace the team's ageing stars during Zlatan's tenure.
Similarly, Drogba has graced the 2006, 2010 and 2014 World Cup without succeeding in helping the Cote d'Ivoire advance past the group stage, despite coming within a whisker in Brazil 18 months ago.

Perhaps more painfully for Drogba, is that after various attempts to win the Africa Cup of Nations with Ivory Coast, he retired just before the Elephants lifted the ultimate prize in African football in early 2015.
Despite this relative lack of success in the international arena, the pair remain among the finest strikers of their generation and will surely go down in history as two of the all-time greats.
For his emphatic contribution in building the modern Chelsea, and crucially, for his very personal contribution to the London club's first-ever Champions League victory, we have to plump for Drogba as the greater of the pair.
Comment below and let us know whether you agree or disagree with our pick