If you watched the Ivory Coast versus Portugal encounter, you saw Didier Drogba come in and play tentatively whenever he got the ball.

Now I have all the respect in the world for Drogba. We know how he plays – 150% all the time. And yet, we saw him being careful, a bit timid, even, if that’s the right word to use.

So I wanted to raise this point.  Should Drogba stay on the bench and let his replacement – Gervinho – go full throttle?  In my mind, a 50% Drogba is not as good as a 100% Gervinho.  And the team suffers when Drogba is not himself.

A suggestion: perhaps Drogba should come in for the last 10 minutes max, if, and this is a big if, Gervinho fails to do the job.

To be fair to be Drogba, his celebrated opponent – Cristiano Ronaldo came up empty-handed as well. Still, I can’t help thinking that Drogba isn’t ready to play yet, and rushing his return, may actually hurt rather than help Ivory Coast.

Let’s see what happens when they play the samba boys from Brazil on Sunday.