Jamie Carragher came up against Didier Drogba on several occasions between 2004 and 2012.
Carragher had already retired by the time Drogba returned for a second spell with Chelsea but when the pair were in their primes, they played out several hard-fought battles with one another.
Drogba previously identified the Liverpool legend as one of the toughest opponents he’s ever faced and the respect was most definitely mutual.
“I would say Jamie Carragher was the most difficult one in terms of aggression, but he was always fair,” the former Ivory Coast centre-forward told The Express in 2014.
Carragher has revealed that Liverpool used to have a special policy when it came to Drogba as the Reds players would avoid getting the powerful striker wound up.
Particularly in big games like the three Champions League semi-finals contested between the teams, Carragher was warned against bringing out the angry side of Drogba.
“In my playing days when Liverpool were up against Chelsea so often, for so many of the big prizes, there was an old rule about how you dealt with Didier Drogba – in my view the striker who changed the way we think about that position,” Carragher wrote in his column in The Telegraph .
“The rule was: don’t rile Didier. When he was angry he seemed to play even better.
“If his temper was up he was like the Hulk, ploughing through everything in his path, impossible to knock off the ball, a real force of nature.
“Looking back I think Drogba changed perceptions about what a striker could do and the way in which a team could be shaped. Many times he did the job of two players and it allowed his managers at Chelsea to change the team around him.”
