Report: Didier Drogba to spend the first month of the MLS season with Miami FC

Throughout January, it seemed likely that Didier Drogba would be hanging up his boots and taking a coaching role with Chelsea. The Ivorian legend ultimately decided to play one final season with the Montreal Impact instead, but on Wednesday, reports emerged that the player has interest in spending the first month of the MLS season with a North American League Soccer side instead.

Spanish paper AS is reporting that Drogba is concerned with several of the playing surfaces that the Impact will start their season on, with four of the opening five games being scheduled to be played on turf. The report states that Drogba would prefer to spend the month of March training with Alessandro Nesta and Miami FC, and then join the Canadian MLS franchise in April, once the schedule begins to put the club on more forgiving playing surfaces.

If this happens, it will certainly be a treat for the new NASL club, as their players would not only be coached by a legend of the game, but they'd get to spend a month training alongside one as well. More notably, however, this really goes to show the kind of appeal former players like Nesta have, and really make you wonder what sort of talent that club could attract if the league did sign some sort of television deal, as rumored, giving them additional money with which to pay a competitive wage.

Drogba's reluctance to play on artificial surfaces also highlights one of the main issues the New York Cosmos are dealing with at the moment, the awful turf at Shuart Stadium. The sooner the club can build themselves a stadium with an all natural surface, the better.