Webster Nyandika and Agencies

The football fraternity in Africa is still coming into terms with the shock and embarrassing defeat of Chelsea legend and former Ivory Coast captain Didier Drogba during the country’s Football Association presidential elections where he failed to garner even a single vote against eventual winner Sory Diabate, despite being the favourite on paper.

Drogba who was last week named as Premier League’s greatest African footballer,  failed to get even a single vote from the country’s association of former footballers, who decided to snub their own in favour of Diabate, who had served for years as the assistant to outgoing president Sidy Diallo, as the little known but influential figure went on to humiliate the legend with a resounding win in the highly symbolic vote.

It was expected that Drogba’s team-mates would overwhelmingly vote for their famous colleague but when the vote tallying began, it became clear that the ex-players preferred the experienced football administrator instead.

Questions have arose on why Drogba’s former team mate Didier Zokora didn’t vote for him and why he ended up amassing zero votes from the Association of former players.

In September last year, Didier Zokora – who played with Drogba in the national team for 12 good years – was appointed to the Technical Directorate of the Ivory Coast Football Association.

The man behind this appointment was Diabate, then a vice president of the Ivory Coast FA and also doubled up as the Ivory Coast League boss.

In fact, nine other former footballers including the great Abdoulaye Traore, Youssouf Fofana, Ibrahim Bakayoko, Kone Ibrahim and others were appointed into similar positions by the FA.

By so doing most of them became engaged and found jobs in football as ex-national stars and full time staffs of the country’s FA with a monthly salary.

Diabaté was also key in helping at least 10 former footballers in the country acquire their coaching license free of charge to pursue coaching careers.

So come 2020, when Diabaté declared his intention to be the country’s next football president, Drogba who expected to be backed by the former footballers since they were birds of the same feathers, got a rude shock.

Other factors worked against Drogba is the fact that he was perceived not to have interest in domestic football, since he had never watched even a single local league match.

He launched his presidential campaign via an interview with a French television station, which did not go down well with many Ivorians.

He is also blamed for failing to visit the Ivorian camp during last year’s Africa Cup of Nations  in Egypt, despite the fact that he was in the North African country to watch the continental showpiece.

Then according to pundits, his cardinal sin was failing to inform his team-mates or rather the former players that he was contesting for the position. -Additional reporting by Ghanaweb