BIG GAMES excite big players and whatever we’ve said or thought about Didier Drogba during his four season at Chelsea, one thing can’t be denied — he is a big-game player. Wembley on an afternoon such as yesterday is his kind of stage and when he streaked clear of Mikael Silvestre with six minutes of the match remaining, you just knew the game was about to be won.

It helped that poor Silvestre is no longer the very good player who sometimes struggled on big days with Manchester United, and that Lukasz Fabianski came for a ball that was never going to be his. Growing up in Poland, Fabianski would never have had to deal with men like Drogba. Strikers with that much pace and power are rare and when those qualities are driven with unrelenting desire, you’re dealing with a formidable character.

After steering the ball wide of Fabianski, Drogba controlled it and made sure he was balanced before guiding it into an unguarded goal. He knew, we knew, it was the winner and the Chelsea faithful in the 88,000 crowd rose to acclaim the striker. That is the moment, the response he craves. He ran towards the fans, arms outstretched, asking them once again, “Who is the warrior?” They knew, he knew, even Arsenal knew. For all the times we have been irritated by the ease with which Drogba tumbles over, there is no getting away from his effectiveness. Chelsea spent much of yesterday’s match chasing Arsenal’s slick-passing team, the service to Drogba was sporadic and often lacking in quality, but he refused to be downbeat. Sometimes you think he’s self-absorbed and yet when he’s performing, nobody works harder for the team.

At the end of the match, he swapped shirts with one of the Arsenal players and left the pitch dressed in the colours of the enemy. “Seven years too late,” Arsène Wenger must have thought, because Arsenal were on Drogba’s trail in 2002 but didn’t follow up the interest with an offer. He would have cost Arsenal £100,000 at the time but the Gunners didn’t believe he was ready. Not since the first manager of The Beatles, Allan Williams, gave up on the band has there been such average judgment.

Wenger knows what he missed out on. Boy, does he know. Because when you are on the receiving end, you become acutely aware of the other guy’s strengths. “Drogba is a winner,” said Wenger after yesterday’s game. “He never stops, he’s always focused and he scores in the big games, so you have to say he’s a great player.”

Trust Wenger to pinpoint Drogba’s greatest strength, that refusal to give up, the unrelenting nature of his warrior approach. It doesn’t matter that he was getting few opportunities yesterday and that when Mikael Silvestre deliberately knocked the ball away from him with his hand, neither the referee nor his assistant saw it as a penalty; Drogba continued to hunt for the one chance that might come his way.

For that never-say-die attitude, he deserves all the credit in the world. At the other end of the pitch, Emmanuel Adebayor faded as the game wore on, almost accepting that in this semi-final, John Terry and Alex had got the better of him. If Drogba comes with greatness, he comes also with baggage. Something that was apparent from an assessment of Alain Pascolou, the manager who took him to Le Mans: “Didier wants to be a leader, wants to be loved. He needs to be lifted by the crowd, to feed on love.” Under Phil Scolari, Drogba felt unloved and didn’t perform anywhere near his best.

Guus Hiddink referred to this indirectly when praising Drogba for his performance yesterday. “He has been in a situation where he was not playing frequently and, of course, in that situation you don’t smile every day. That’s logical.”

Because Chelsea didn’t control yesterday’s game and despite the fact that Lampard supplied the two long passes leading to the goals, Chelsea were outplayed in midfield for long periods. They won because they had Drogba and Arsenal’s defence couldn’t handle him. “We made it a little bit too easy for him at times,” said Wenger, and that was true of the winning goal.

Wenger will know that Sir Alex Ferguson let Silvestre leave Old Trafford because he believed the defender’s best days were behind him. Because of injuries to William Gallas and Johan Djourou, Wenger chose to play Silvestre in the centre of his defence. About the kindest thing you could say about Silvestre now is that Ferguson didn’t make a mistake in selling him to his rivals.