Didier Drogba: (English)

Didier Drogba is, by his own admission, a dreamer.

As a boy, he watched Diego Maradona lift the World Cup and dreamed of doing the same. As a 16-year-old, he watched Ajax beat the mighty AC Milan to win the Champions League from his home in Abidjan and let himself imagine what it might be like to get his hands on that trophy.

Throughout his career, a sense of destiny has followed him from Ivory Coast to Istanbul, via Marseille, an incredible night in Munich and eight years in the blue of Chelsea. The latest twist is no different.

"Are Chelsea better than Galatasaray? Yes, they are 10 times better," the Galatasaray striker, now 35, says as we begin to discuss the impending reunion with his old club in the last 16 of the Champions League.

"If I play it is to win. It will be tough but Juve were better than us, so anything can happen. If there's a 1% chance of us winning. I'll believe it."

We meet on a cloudless afternoon on the outskirts of Istanbul.

Drogba greets me with a warm smile and the kind of handshake you would expect from this wrecking ball of a centre forward. He may not speak the language, but in Turkish there is a special tense for dreams and, as he begins to speak, it is clear he may as well be using it as he considers the reality of playing against a club with whom he is intrinsically associated. Will he be able to keep his emotions in check?

Before the Champions League draw Mourinho said he wanted to draw Galatasaray so Drogba could "come back here and feel what I felt"

"It will be difficult," he says. "You don't stay eight years in a place you don't like, especially in football - it is very emotional. I love Chelsea but I play for Galatasaray now and I will give everything for them."

Drogba retains the same passion, almost two years after scoring the most significant goal in Chelsea's history to secure a first Champions League trophy.

He fiddles with his black cloth flat cap as he recalls a gallery of memories from his time at Stamford Bridge. Of 157 goals in 342 games, three Premier League titles, four FA Cups, two League Cups and that winning penalty against Bayern Munich - his last kick in a Chelsea shirt - in the Champions League final.

"When you're happy at a club, you want to stay forever," said Drogba, who joined Chelsea from Marseille for £24m in July 2004. "But sometimes you can't do everything you want to do. I am proud of what I achieved."And yet he has begun a new love affair in Turkey. Standing below the minarets of the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, his name is greeted with adulation. His contract ends this summer and before he decides anything, he will give the Turkish giants the chance to keep him.

Five days after scoring the winning penalty in the Champions League final of 2012, Drogba announced he was leaving Chelsea.

"I will study every offer in the summer," he says. "But I will look at the one from Galatasaray because they gave me a chance to play again at a high level and I'll see what is on the table. I want to win, not just to play, but to play to win. I know it is a bad habit."

There has been no contact from Chelsea, as yet, but could he ever rule out the possibility of going back, of a reunion with Mourinho? "They say in French 'avec des si. Rome ne s'est pas construite en un jour' [there are lots of ifs. Rome wasn't built in a day]. It is only if and if and if. We are not there yet."

The conversation takes place in a sunlit room overlooking the first-team training pitch inside Galatasaray's walled training ground. Armed guards patrol the pathways around the complex and, passing through the vast gated entrance, you are immediately confronted by a vast image of the club celebrating their victory over Arsenal in the Uefa Cup final on penalties in 2000.

Drogba led the club to the title in his first season, helping them reach the knockout stages of the Champions League, where they lost to Real Madrid.

This season, the success has continued and victory over Juventus in the group stages secured a place in the last 16 for a second successive season and the chance to let fate pair him with Chelsea.