On This Day: Blues legend Drogba was born; Cech 1st to reach 200 PL clean sheets

Hi all, welcome to All Football's On This Day! Let's find out what happened today (March 11th) in football history. If you have more stories and news that happened on this day in history, feel free to post them in the comment area and share them with AFers!

On This Day in 1978 - Drogba Rising

On 11 March 1978, Didier Drogba was born in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. He went on to become one of the world's dominant strikers.

Growing up, he spent many years living in France and it was there he started his professional career, joining the youth program at Levallois in 1996, then moving to Le Mans in 1997. In 1998, he signed a professional contract with Le Mans and played there for three and a half years, scoring a total of only 15 goals in 75 appearances before moving to Guingamp for £80,000 in the winter transfer window.

The move sparked his career. In his first full season there, he scored 21 goals, attracting the interest of Marseille who signed him for £3.3M in the summer 2003. After only one remarkable season at Marseille, in which he scored 32 goals across all competitions and was named the Ligue 1 Player of the Year, he moved again, this time to Chelsea who paid £24M.

In eight seasons with Chelsea, he scored 157 goals in 341 appearances, making him the fourth-highest goalscorer in club history. He also collected a massive haul of silverware, including three league titles, four FA Cups, and one Champions League trophy.

Along the way, he also captained the Côte d'Ivoire national team and is their all-time leading scorer with 65 goals in 104 appearances.

After leaving Chelsea at the end of his contract in 2012, he spent time with Shanghai Shenhua (2012-13) and Galatasaray (2013-14) before returning to Chelsea for the 2014-15 season. He then played for the Montreal Impact (2015-16) before joining his current club, Phoenix Rising, as player-owner in 2017. 

In 2018, Drogba retired from professional football at the age of 40. Afterwards, on 11 December, he became Vice President of the international organization Peace and Sport.

On This Day in 2018 - Cech's Great Record

On 11th March 2018, Petr Cech saved a penalty for the first time since 2011 on his way to reaching 200 Premier League clean sheets in Arsenal's 3-0 win against Watford on Sunday.

The Czech goalkeeper had not kept out a spot-kick in the top flight since denying Clint Dempsey in the final minute of a goalless draw between Chelsea and Fulham at Craven Cottage seven years ago.

However, the 35-year-old got a strong arm to Troy Deeney's effort from 12 yards - a save that will have felt all the sweeter following the striker's comments regarding Arsenal's perceived lack of "cojones" earlier in the season.

The stop also helped Cech finally reach 200 clean sheets, having conceded at least one goal in each of his last 11 matches, becoming the first Premier League goalkeeper to reach the marker.

"It's an unbelievable personal milestone and we took only 18 games to reach nine clean sheets at the start of the season, so when you reach 199... we had to wait 11 games, which is sometimes frustrating but the most important is when the team wins," he told Sky Sports.

On This Day in 1900 - The New Kids On The Piazza

On 11 March 1900, Juventus played their first competitive match, losing 0-1 to Torinese. It was one of only four matches for them that season.

Founded in November 1897, at approximately the same time the first Italian league contests began, Juventus were not admitted to the league until three years later. At the time, the league, known as the Italian Football Championship, was divided into regional groups, with the group winners advancing to a series of playoffs.

Only six teams participated in the 1900 edition, with Juventus joined in the Piedmont group with FBC Torinese and Ginnastica Torino (both unrelated to the current Torino FC). The other groups were Liguria, which included Genoa and Sampierdarenese, and Lombardy, which had only one team, Milan.

Torinese had already beaten Ginnastica Torino before meeting Juventus at the Piazza d'Armi. Still wearing their original pink and black kits, Juventus fell by a single goal. They went on to beat Ginnastica twice, both times by the score of 2-0, before losing again to Torinese 2-1.

They eventually won the first of thirty-one titles in 1905 after changing to their current black-and-white striped shirts, while Torinese were disbanded in 1906.

11 March 1934 - A Pair Of Nines

On 11 March 1934, both Spain and Germany opened their World Cup qualification campaigns with dominant wins over their neighbors, scoring 9 goals each.

The day represented the first involvement in the tournament for both of the future winners, neither of whom had participated in the 1930 World Cup. Unlike that first one, which had only 13 countries competing, the 1934 edition had so many interested teams that FIFA instituted a qualification process. Spain went into a two-team qualification group with Portugal, while Germany joined France and Luxembourg in a group of three.

Spain enjoyed the biggest win of qualification, beating Portugal 9-0 in Madrid. They scored their first goal after only three minutes and never looked back, going up 3-0 by the break. The 9-0 final score included five goals from Real Oviedo striker Isidro Lángara (pictured).

Germany also scored their first goal after only three minutes with a goal from Vfl Benrath forward Josef Rasselnberg. Playing at Luxembourg's Stade Municipal, Germany were up 0-3 when the hosts scored in the 27th minute, then extended their lead to 1-5 before halftime. Rasselnberg added three more goals to the final score of 1-9.

Both Spain and Germany qualified easily--Spain beat Portugal again, 1-2, while Germany did not need another match. In their group's next game, France beat Luxembourg 1-6, so both France and Germany advanced without having to play their group's final scheduled match. In the tournament proper, Spain fell to eventual winners Italy in the quarterfinals, while Germany lost to eventual runners-up Czechoslovakia in the semifinals.