Historical Feats At Champions League?

Champions League group stages  is now coming to the end with Manchester City out of not just the Champions League, but also the Europa League. it only goes to show that money just cannot buy you everything especially pedigree. Chelsea will surely join the the bandwagon, I do not see Juventus or Shakhtar going out of the Champions League, Chelsea however will create history as the first defending champions to go out of the group stages of the Champions League. Chelsea's problem is not the past or present managers, but it is the great Roman Abramovich himself, who needs to take leaf out of the Glazer book of Manchester United. Chairmanship is all about not being seen  and still doing the job subtly without getting noticed for you to get noticed! Yes such contradictions of being a owner of a big sports club or rather try to make a sport club bigger in Chelsea's case. 

Meanwhile in planet Catalonia in a city called Barcelona, an alien called Messi is busy at work sharpening  his laser gun (boots in this case Adidas) for the upcoming match against Benfica of Portugal. He will most likely make history by scoring and equalling Gerd Mueller's record of 85 goals in one calendar year, further putting the Champions League in spotlight. and I think he will go more than that by scoring at least two. It is amazing when we hear fans talking about comparisons of football greats with present players we always hear things like "The game is faster so definitely Messi is better to Pele, Maradona, Mueller, etc" This includes the pundits or former players too, but amazingly they bring up former greats'  records as a barometer of record breaking, so why even bother when they say that Messi is already the greatest? I mean no doubt Messi deserves his place as ONE of the greats, but if you want to compare the game being slower back in the  "old days", you should take into account that the ball back then was not easy to control. A few years back a university in Germany conducted an experiment, Hamburg players were asked to control a old football, a model used in the 50s and 60s and they could not, these were professional Bundesliga players and the players had new found respect for players who played with this ball. It was bouncing like a jelly bean and to see players like Pele, Puskas and Di Steafano control it and trick players was really amazing, so we should just be happy and enjoy the game, be appreciative that you are witness to history and do not take your football, satellite TV or ESPN for granted!