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It was just after the first hour when Didier Drogba moved in front of the goal and deflected a Bayern shot. That he was up front in the scrum told me he was taking over the match, that his aging body was up to playing the entire field for one more hour.
He was there at the end, too, with the goal that tied the match, and the penalty kick that won the Champions League final for Chelsea, just as he was there in the late minutes against Barcelona earlier in the month. In the pandemonium afterward, one broadcaster, I think it was Gary Neville, was babbling about English courage and English pride and English moxie, but if I am not mistaken Drogba is a citizen of Ivory Coast and Peter Cech is Czech, and Roberto Di Matteo is (as I was reminded this week) Swiss-born although he played 34 times for Italy. And for that matter, owner Roman Abramovich is a Russian oligarch of Latvian and Jewish ancestry. That is the way it works in the most international of sports. Drogba was always going to be there in the desperate moments of the match -- and for the fifth penalty kick. He carried this team after the captain, John Terry, disgraced himself with a sneak kick to a Barcelona player in the semifinals, and was banished for the finals. Terry should not have been allowed to receive a medal in the ceremony afterward. Watching Drogba pull his teammates along was like watching Michael Jordan or Derek Jeter or Mark Messier play offense and defense in the biggest of games. Bayern was at home, and had more flash, more offense, but Drogba held Chelsea together. It sounds as if he is gone from Chelsea, at 34. Can you imagine his power and his will up front for all those nifty passers at Barca? And Abramovich apparently has some master plan that does not include Di Matteo to run the club next season. It’s nice to be the oligarch. Because Drogba helped will Chelsea to be the first London squad to win the European Cup in the 57 seasons of its existence, Di Matteo should privately hand Drogba one token of his final months – a yellow captain’s arm band, just to take with him in his luggage. The player from Ivory Coast made Chelsea the toast of England.
8 Comments
Brian Savin
5/19/2012 12:10:34 pm
I actually watched this myself from the 23d minute when I tuned in -- reluctantly at first, but I got into it after the half hour it took for me to figure out which team was which and where they were playing, and who was singing that interesting drum chant at that time. OK, I must concede it was one of the best sporting events I've seen in a long, long time. GV's post is chock full of fascinating details that help me understand this better (even on real quick read before we go out for the evening) and I want to reread for full enjoyment. The excitement of the event was even better than the Preakness -- and that says a ton in my too narrow view of the sporting world!
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Andy Tansey
5/19/2012 03:56:14 pm
Just finished the DVR. Drogba's redemption has been just about Beckham-like, from beneath contempt when banned a few years ago to more recent heroics. To my chagrin, not the least because of the effect on Spurs, I must doff my cap to him.
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Alan Rubin
5/20/2012 12:58:47 pm
George—your skillful reporting of soccer goes well beyond actual game statistics in that so much of the human aspect is included. It is easy to see why Brian is inching toward becoming a soccer fan.
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Hansen Alexander
5/20/2012 03:08:34 am
George,
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George Vecsey
5/20/2012 03:15:15 am
Guys, thanks. Hansen, the common wisdom in publishing is that soccer books do not sell.
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Alan Rubin
5/20/2012 03:20:22 am
George--Tom Friedman's OP-ED in today's NY Times indicates how easy it has become to self-publish and that 16 of the top 100 best sellers on Kindle are self-published.
George Vecsey
5/20/2012 09:29:08 am
I did read Friedman's column with interest. An author-friend of mine (we all know the name) is doing his next book "like Dickens" -- 6-8 chapters in sequence, electronically, as he writes them. It's a thought. GV Leave a Reply. |
QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |
