Marseille Fans Raise €1.65 Million (and Counting) to Try to Buy Back Didier Drogba

By: Laurie | July 14th, 2008

The site “Didier Revient” (Didier Returns) has a banner reading, “Impossible N’est Pas Marseillais.” Or, to paraphrase, “Impossible is not a Marseille thing.”

You have to take that at least semi-seriously, because Marseille fans are making a very game effort to attempt the impossible: To bring a superstar BACK to Ligue 1. Their target? Chelsea striker Didier Drogba.

The site is dedicated to raising money to buy Drogba back for Olympique de Marseille, the team he left back in 2004. It saw so much traffic over the weekend it crashed. It’s now back up, and when I visited at 1:15 (Pacific) this afternoon, Marseille fans had raised €1,651,291 from 23,305 participants. Six minutes later, they were up to €1,652,922 from 23,323 donors. At 1:45, they were at €1,661,725 from 23,422. That’s €10,434 in half an hour. And it comes out to a little more than €70 per contributor, or about $111. (Maximum contribution allowed per donor is €200.)

Considering Drogba’s estimated transfer price is €28 million, their chances for success are…well…perhaps not impossible, exactly. But definitely not great either. And this would be just the transfer fee. No word on where the money to actually pay the guy would come from. (Back in 2006, he signed a contract with Chelsea that was rumored to pay him over £100,000 a week. Also, don’t forget that France has an incredibly high tax rate, so any Ligue 1 team would need to pay far more to give an EPL player the same takehome pay.)

And let’s not even mention that new Chelsea coach Luiz Felipe “Big Phil” Scolari has said that he has no intention of letting Drogba go.

These are minor details when we’re talking about dreams. Which is, of course, what we’re talking about.

On the site, where it says “Combien seriez vous prêt a donner?” or How much would you be ready to donate?, I offered up my “Pseudo” (Laurie) and a sum of €100, just to see where it took me. I expected some attempt to verify who I was. Maybe a request for a credit card number, or a threat to take my firstborn if I didn’t pay up.

It just took me back to the site, where, presumably, my name has been added to the list.

I guess dreams are all about faith.

And I have now spent far too much time looking for my “Psuedo” amidst the “Pseudos” of the other 23,566 “donors.” Because… Well, dammit, they’ve convinced me. It is now my dream to bring back Didier.

There are days when I’d even offer up my firstborn to make it happen.

(Magnusson over at Marseille Offside has more on the Drogbathon.)