FOOTBALL: 'Drogba, is the one frontal big game player.'

They regularly shine against the best teams in the league. They show all their character, guts and skill and use them to come out on top and smash the other big team into oblivion. The big game player. Players like Drogba...and...and...

See, here is the problem.
You go onto the Liverpool forum disappointed the morning after the Chelsea game (but not nearly as much as after Fiorentina-gate) and you find, as always, posts that You disagree with wholeheartedly.
My particular favorites the day after were posts such as 'And again Gerrard doesn't do it against the big teams.'
I must have missed Chelsea at Stamford Bridge last year, Man U at Old Trafford last year. Real Madrid.

Players like Gerrard and Torres are expected to shine against the very best the premiership has to offer. Thing is that the other team don't want this to happen so they take steps to neutralise said players, and with that class a team like Chelsea has (Terry, Carvalho and Essien are all class players to protect the keeper with) you can curtail attacking threats, wherein the other players in the squad have to step up and fill the void left by the canceling out of the big players on each team.

Then the game either becomes one where the better team performance wins out. Good example: Arsenal against Man United recently: Arsenal had that game by the scruff of the neck and threw it away. Not because Man U's big players like Rooney and Berbatov stepped up, or even Fletcher, who is said to be a 'big game player' yet gave away 6 fouls that day. Nor did Arsenal lose because Arshavin stopped doing magic.
Arsenal lost because they were Arsenal and lost their heads in the big moments.

You can relate also to Chelsea under Scolari, facing Liverpool at Stamford Bridge. Gerrard may have mastered his marker Mikel for most of the match but Gerrard wasn't the deciding factor - that was the fact that Chelsea as a team simply didn't have the answers to Liverpool's tactics (and a certain deflected goal may have helped)

There are players who step up sometimes in big games (Ronaldo against Scolari's Chelsea the same year, Arsenal in the champions league semis) But as for players who have stamped on their head 'big game player' all the time?
Actually, yes there are. Just not so much in the attacking area.

This is what makes Drogba so valuable to Chelsea - Since he restruck form after Scolari left he has consistently been very much a big game player - Against Liverpool, Barcelona, Arsenal, Man United in the community shield, Everton in the fa cup final he has been consistently influential by the fact that you can't shut him down anymore - He'll just find somewhere else to cause chaos. But he is essentially one of a kind - Messi has shown that even on form he can be shut down, although that, again, was also partly down to Barcelona's tactics (and the idiocy of Alves cutting inside Bosingwa for 85 minutes of each game rather then bringing Barca width and not jut putting a damn cross into the box)

Drogba, is the one frontal big game player. He is consistently (nowadays) a complete nightmare to deal with for the big teams. No other frontal player can claim that.

Of course, other positions can. I would like to say that Mascherano is a big game player...mostly. Defensive mids are a key cog to a team trying to beat a top team, and Mascherano ranks among the very best and proved it against Chelsea where I suspect Lucas may have had more trouble. But then, Masch made that little error of course, that led to Chelsea's first, and ultimately pivotal goal.

So yes, most of the time Masch has been a great presence to have, and he's a big game player. And yes there are big game players further back down the field, but if the time comes when people stop saying 'Ronaldo/ Torres/ Gerrard/ Lampard dont cut it against the big teams.' I will be a happy man. Because actually, all of these players and other mecurial attacking talents have had great moments against other big sides. They just don't do it all the time.

And noone means the same thing when they say big game player anyway. Some people even think Park Ji Sung is a big game player. But there you go.

Cheerio.