- [Narrator] It's May 19th, 2012.
We're in Munich, Germany, where the champions league final
between Bayern Munich and Chelsea
has come down to penalty kicks.
Before Chelsea's Didier Drogba
attempts a make or break shot there's a lot
we need to understand about how much this moment
means to him and to this cluster of fans.
We need to remember the important characters
and unexpected events that made this moment possible.
This shot means so, so much.
So we've got to rewind.
(ethereal music)
Okay, before we dig in deep,
I wanna make sure we're on the same page about what this is.
Bayern Munich are playing in Munich
at this big fancy brand new arena
but that's just a fortunate coincidence.
This isn't a planned home match or anything.
Their opponent is an English side, Chelsea.
This is the Champions League.
♪ The champions ♪
You can edit that out.
So, this competition has existed in some name
or form since the 1950s,
when it began with a simple premise
have the champions of each European league face each other
in a tournament to determine the champion of champions.
One club to rule all of Europe.
In the decades since they've come up with a cool name
and they've expanded the league and format quite a bit.
It's complex, but the important thing for us
is that these days it's not just for literal champions,
strong domestic leagues like the English Premier League
and German Bundesliga get to send several
of their best finishers
to the following year's champions league.
That was good news for Chelsea and Bayern Munich.
Neither finished the 2011 season at top their leagues
but both did well enough that they qualified
to play a bunch of clubs from other countries
in between their usual domestic fixtures this season.
The domestic season went a bit better for Bayern
this time around with only rivals Borussia Dortmund
outperforming them.
Dortmund edged Bayern in two regular matches,
top them in the final standings and beat them
pretty soundly in Germany's DFB-Pokal tournament final
just a week ago.
And extremely second place domestic season
for Mario Gomez in France.
Chelsea would love to say the same.
Within England the Blues had a pretty grim 2011-12 campaign.
Young brand new manager, Andre Villas-Boas
took over a squad of aging stars
chasing another title or two.
They got off to a rough start, Villas-Boas
alienated key veteran players like Alex and Nicholas Anelka.
Chelsea piled up disappointing draws and dismal defeats.
Longtime star Frank Lampard broadcast displeasure
with his coach.
By mid season, Chelsea had fallen out
of the EPL's upper echelon dismaying circumstances
for a club that had finished top four every year since 2003.
Even in his debut season Villas-Boas
didn't get much leeway.
Chelsea fired their overwhelmed leader in March
promoting assistant and former player Roberto Di Matteo
to interim manager.
Too little too late, at least for the premier league.
Chelsea won the FA cup
England's foremost knockout tournament,
but they couldn't match that success in the regular table.
They're astounding sixth place finish put Chelsea
below the qualifying line for the 2013 Champions League.
There's only one remaining opportunity
to sneak back into next year's competition, this right here.
For all their domestic misery,
Chelsea's had a hell of a run in this Champions league.
It actually kind of mirrors Bayern's.
In December Bayern took care of group A,
while Chelsea won group E.
Both teams survived an early scare in the first leg
of the knockout stage by winning huge
in their second legs at home.
Both had an easier time in their quarterfinals
and each faced one of the mighty Spanish superpowers
in a dramatic semifinal.
Late in their second leg against Barcelona,
Chelsea clung to a narrow, away goals advantage
with the aggregate score even.
They'd been down to 10 men since captain John Terry
got sent off in the first half.
Then magic happened, minutes after subbing on
for striker Didier Drogba,
newcomer Fernando Torres struck on the counter attack
to make it a sure thing.
Bayern slayed a Spanish dragon
in similarly thrilling fashion.
Their matchup with Real Madrid came down to penalty kicks
and goalkeeper Manuel Neuer,
carried them out of that final battle.
Neuer pounce to his right to stop no less
than Cristiano Ronaldo, then guessed correctly
once more versus Kaka.
When Madrid Sergio Ramos tried to evade Neuer
he struck post allowing Bastian Schweinsteiger
to punch Bayern through to the final.
Now here's, Neuer called upon to play here at once more.
He's already saved one of these penalties
when Juan Mata left Chelsea's first kick a bit too metal.
If Neuer doesn't save another one here,
Bayern will lose the Champions League final in Munich.
The Bayern keeper relishes these moments.
He loved stepping up for his team in Madrid.
That recent success and a whole lot of research
make Neuer feel confident he can outmaneuver
the best of scores.
(dramatic music)
But I don't think Neuer expected to be in this position.
It took some strange circumstances and surprises
for the match to make it this far.
To begin with, the Champions League here in 2012
has an extremely strict discipline rule.
Each side played tonight without multiple important players.
Guys who'd been suspended because they accrued
too many bookings in prior matches.
Bayern's missing a crucial defender
and a chunk of its midfield.
Captain John Terry is one of a couple missing
Chelsea defenders and they've also played without Ramirez
who played a spectacular, critical role
in each leg of the Barcelona semifinal.
That partially explains why Neuer
wasn't involved much before the shootout.
Chelsea were over-matched, playing with some injuries
in the backfield and starting Ryan Bertrand
out of position because of the suspensions.
For most of this battle,
they've been hanging back on the defensive.
Ashley Cole, and David Luiz flinging themselves
in front of Bayern's shots and stalwart keeper Petr Cech
containing nearly everything else.
But to really understand how we got here,
you need to recall the moments Bayern
got through that desperate Chelsea defense
and thereby understand
the missing faces from this lineup of kick takers.
There's no Thomas Muller in this group.
Muller was a big part of Bayern's first half onslaught
that just couldn't connect.
This missed wide of plum cross from Diego Contento
exemplified that period of wasted opportunity.
Finally, late in regulation time, Muller broke through.
Unattended on the right side, Muller received a high cross
from Toni Kroos and head banged it home
to put Munich up one nil in the 83rd minute.
To protect that lead, Bayern subbed off Muller
and replaced him with an extra defender Daniel Van Buyten.
Obviously that did not work out so hot.
And Bayern had to take these penalties regretfully missing
the only guy who'd found the net.
Well, I guess that's technically not accurate.
Franck Ribery is another Bayern scoring threat missing
from this list of kick takers.
Like Muller, he blew some chances in the first half,
like Muller, he got the ball pass check in the second half
but in his case, the offside flag was up, sorry.
That's not why Ribery is missing though.
He's gone because this Drogba tackle
during extra time hurt his ankle.
Just kind of clipped him from behind, you can't do that.
Ribery limped off the field.
The refs awarded Bayern a penalty kick for the foul
and that responsibility felt a former Chelsea star
Arjen Robben, interesting choice because Cech maybe knows
how to read his old teammate.
He had already made this incredible save
on Robben in the first half.
On the penalty, Cech guessed correctly and dove
to stuff Robben once more.
That was enough for Robben
to be left out of Bayern's initial shooting quintet here.
None of these shots were his.
This one was Ivica Olic,
the sub who came on to replace Ribery
and did take one and kind of biffed it, easy save.
Schweinsteiger followed that by trying to fool Cech
with a stutter step, didn't work.
- [Announcer] Hits the post. (crowd cheering)
- [Narrator] So yeah, there is plenty of regret
on the Bayern's side as they watch this last Chelsea kick.
Only Neuer can clean up the mess.
And to keep Bayern alive,
he'll have to save a second penalty.
That's a lot of pressure,
but nothing like the pressure on this guy, Didier Drogba.
Drogba is up there among the greatest
ever Chelsea players.
The striker from the Ivory Coast
joined the club in 2004 when he was 26 years old.
Since then, he's scored way more goals
than any other non-English born player in club history.
Drogba led them to three premier league titles
and the FA Cup victory earlier this month
was Drogba's fourth, but Drogba and long-time teammate
Frank Lampard have never won the champions league.
The closest they ever came was 2008
an event Chelsea fans absolutely do not want
to hear about right now.
Four years ago in Moscow, the champions league final
was all English for the first time in its history.
Chelsea faced bitter rival Manchester United.
Cristiano Ronaldo scored early for United
but Lampard answered.
The second half and extra time passed without another goal.
As time wound down, everyone braced
for decisive penalty kicks, with Drogba's name
almost certainly among the top five for Chelsea,
but he had been battling United's Nemanja Vidic
all match long.
And in the 116th minute moments before penalties,
Drogba got fed up and smacked Vidic in the face.
Red card, Gonzo miserable time with Drogba watching
from afar, Chelsea cruised through the first four penalties.
Things were going fine.
Then the man chosen to replace Drogba stepped up
for a fifth shot to win the whole thing.
He took a short run-up and whop, fell on his ass.
The ball squirting off into the post.
A later miss consigned Chelsea to an all time brutal defeat
lacking a champions league title because of that,
haunts Drogba.
And this is almost certainly his last chance
to overwrite his most famous moment in this competition.
It's not 2008 anymore.
Chelsea's golden generation had already begun to dissolve
when in late 2011, Drogba rejected an extension
to his expiring contract.
His agent stated quite simply that Didier would join
whomever offered the most money
and everyone knows that's not gonna be Chelsea.
So four years after one of his lowest career moments,
34 year old Didier Drogba took the pitch
for what almost certainly his final game with Chelsea.
One unexpected last minute chance to perfect his legacy.
Through most of this match the opportunities
were few and far between.
With all hands on deck to stifle the Bayern attack,
Chelsea only pinched off a few countering
long balls to Drogba.
This first half past from Lampard was one of the first
to find Drogba in a threatening spot,
but the striker couldn't corral the high bounce.
Chelsea went long enough without finding Drogba
that Di Mateo brought Fernando Torres on once more.
This time Torres didn't replace Drogba
like he had in Barcelona.
They played together and arrangement in which remarkably
neither man had ever scored a goal, that changed.
Before this match Juan Mata gave Drogba
a big pep-talk and in the 88th minute
when Mata lined up a corner kick, fate chose the target.
With a powerful snap of his neck,
Drogba headed in the equalizer.
- [Announcer] What about that. (crowd cheering)
Chelsea man for the big occasion.
- [Narrator] So Drogba has already left
and indelible incredible mark on his final match.
Although I will note things haven't been great since.
Near the end of regular time,
Drogba insisted on taking a free kick instead of Lampard
and absolutely air mailed it.
The foul Drogba committed to knock Ribery
out of the game was a bad one
and it would have been devastating
if Cech didn't save Robben's penalty.
But the match made it to penalty kicks.
And unlike the 2008 final, Drogba gets to take one,
the big one and not for nothing
he's faltered in this kind of moment pretty recently.
Earlier, this year Drogba led the Ivory Coast
into the knockout stage of the Africa Cup of Nations.
In the quarterfinal against Equatorial Guinea,
Drogba had an early penalty kicks saved.
He redeemed himself with two goals later on
but no such luck in the final.
The final against Zambia should have been decided
by this ugly second half foul in the box.
But Drogba sent the resulting kick way North of the goal.
That left the match to end nil-nil.
So it had to be decided by penalty kicks,
where this Drogba finish off a short run-up wasn't enough
for the Ivory Coast.
Drogba had already squandered his chance
to win his first AFCON title.
And now just months later here he is,
another critical penalty kick.
This time against Manuel Neuer,
the keeper who's heroics carried Bayern Munich
into this final in their home city.
It was a bad season for Chelsea, not champion quality,
but with what might be his final kick in blue,
Didier Drogba could get Chelsea
back into next year's competition.
He could grab a title he's never won before,
he could fix a blemish on his legacy.
This means everything.
Welcome to a moment in history.
- [Announcer] It all down to this, one kick of the ball.
(crowd cheering) (whistle blowing)
By Didier Drogba. - [Man] Yes.
- [Announcer] It's the greatest night in Chelsea's history.
Champions of Europe at last.
(crowd cheering)
(logo whooshing)
(ethereal music)