Avoiding the Drop

Most of us are pretty confident we know Didier Drogba. He’s the pouting locker room malcontent who whined his way around Scolari’s locker room for most of last season. He followed up his red card for slapping Carlos Tevez in the 2008 Champions League final with the whole Tom Henning Øvrebø rant in the 2009 Champions League semifinals. He dives to the ground for every single little bit of contact he suffers, then rolls around like he’s been shot so often that he even got a yellow card for being kicked in the chest by Johny Evans. And then, when he signed on as a Pepsi spokesman earlier this month, he had the audacity to donate the entire £3 million fee to build a hospital back in the his native Côte d’Ivoire.

Wait, what?

That’s right, folks: Didier Drogba might not be a complete dickhead after all. In fact, recent news about him almost indicates someone that’s…wait for it…likeable.

Back in 2007, Drogba responded to his friend Stefan’s death to leukemia in a rather noble way: he set up the Didier Drogba Foundation with the aim of building a hospital in his hometown of Abidjan by the end of 2010. He explained his desire to raise the money to the Daily Mail like this:

‘I have seen much suffering throughout Africa, especially with my work with the UN. But when I visited a hospital in Abidjan earlier this year, I was shocked by the terrible conditions. We hear about all the incurable diseases, but these kids are just as likely to die from diabetes because there is no insulin available. It was then I decided the foundation’s first project should be to build and fund a hospital giving people basic healthcare and a chance just to stay alive.’

So when Drogba was handed the chance a couple of weeks ago to be the new spokesman for Pepsi (replacing none other than David Beckham, who ended his ten year partnership with the colamaker back in December of 2008), he didn’t see a paycheck: he saw an opportunity to raise the money needed for his foundation to reach their goal. Word is that he even convinced Chelsea (who would typically be given a cut of that money as part of his image rights) to forego their payment; more interestingly, there’s a rumor that Roman Abramovich matched Drogba’s £3 million donation.

Careful reading of that quote opens up another door: work with the UN? That’s right, folks: Drogba’s taken a page out of the Angelina Jolie playbook and teamed up with the United Nations as a goodwill ambassador. His mission (which ironically parallels the wishes of every non-Chelsea supporter) is “Eight goals in six years”. Of course, the UN’s goals are much different: End poverty and hunger, universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, environmental sustainability, and global partnership.

Drogba’s charity work was again put on display on Monday, when he teamed up with Bono and Nike to announce the “Lace Up. Save Lives.” campaign to celebrate World AIDS Day (that was yesterday, by the way). Says Drogba on the campaign:

“It was important to me to be involved in the Red campaign because I’m from Africa. It’s a big honour and pleasure for me to be linked with Bono and try to help him save some lives. AIDS and HIV is something that really destroyed Africa, and people don’t really realise how easy it is to save lives – only two pills a day, which is 40 cents.”

He even goes on to credit the campaign’s red laces (which he wore against Arsenal on Sunday) for that performance Arsene Wenger wasn’t that impressed with:

“I think the red laces really helped me, especially for the free-kick. I was really proud to have a chance to show the laces and after the game people were calling me: ‘Why were you wearing red laces?’ and I had to explain to them.”

All things considered, this is a hell of a lot more charity work than I’d ever thought Drogba did, and it’s pretty impressive. To be 100% honest, I’m having a rough time not begrudgingly liking the guy now.