Not too many soccer fans can forget the sight of Chelsea’s Didier Drogba going a mad rant against referee Tom Henning Ovrebo during their loss to Barcelona in the Champions League competition earlier this year. Now Drogba says he’s a changed man, but it wasn’t the three match ban or the threat over the summer that he would be transferred away from Stamford Bridge that did the trick, it was his eight year old son Issac.

Although he did apologize to both the watching millions and the stunned ref, according to Drogba it took his son telling him what everybody else was saying was true – Daddy was wrong – to really bring home the fact that he needed to put his temper in check.

“I don’t always worry about what people think, but on this occasion it was really important to come out and apologize because of kids watching the games,” he told The Times of London . “My son was watching with his friends from school and I was embarrassed by my behavior. The good thing was that Isaac came to me and said, ‘It’s not right what you did, Dad, you should have had more penalties, but it’s not right to do that to referees.’

And Issac apparently does know his soccer; he is a member of the Chelsea Under Nines squad already although his Dad admits that he is a much calmer player than he ever was.

(By the way if you are one of the few who has never seen the flare up in question, you can find the footage of the bad old Drogba right here on Soccertools in the Videos Section )