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Didier Drogba's Story About Preparing For Lionel Messi Is Incredible

Didier Drogba's Story About Preparing For Lionel Messi Is Incredible

Ahead of tonight's Champions League tie, here's a story to get you in the mood...

Ryan Sidle

Ryan Sidle

Lionel Messi is a bit good, isn't he? I know that's the hottest of hot takes and I'm sorry for not warning you before I dropped that incredible truth bomb.

However it's not until you really have it written down till you can appreciate just how good, as Didier Drogba learnt in 2012.

Of course we all know that the man has won five Ballon d'Ors is in the top two players on the planet right now and is arguably one of the best players of all time, he may even own that accolade to himself.

Lionel Messi priceless
Lionel Messi priceless

Neymar might have cost nearly £200 million but his former teammate is quite simply priceless. Image: PA

The 30 year old has scored 525 times since signing for Barcelona, making him the club's leading scorer of all time, and won 29 titles with Barcelona, including Super Cups and the Club World Cup.

He is a daunting prospect for any time who come up against him. Even Chelsea and Didier Drogba couldn't quite believe how good he was when they came up against him in 2012, as Drogba wrote in his autobiography.

With Barcelona and Chelsea once again paired up in the knockout stages of the Champions League, we thought the anecdote would be worth sharing again, so here it is:

"Robbie Di Matteo did what he always did and put up a list of the opposing team's top scorers. Usually, the list would read something along the lines of Rooney - 22 goals; Van Persie - 15 and so on.

"When the Barcelona list went up, sure enough, in third place was Xavi on 14, in equal second place were Alexis Sánchez and Cesc Fàbregas on 15, but we all just laughed when the top scorer came up on the screen - Lionel Messi on ... 63 goals, 14 in the Champions League alone!

"But 63 that season? It was such a ridiculous figure that we looked at each other in disbelief and laughed - what else could we do? I even took a picture of the number because it was so outrageous."

That season the Argentine forward would break the record for most goals scored in a season by bagging an incredible 73 times but he would finish on 14 goals in the Champions League as Chelsea stopped him.

Messi was stopped in this instance though, as Chelsea beat Barca over two legs. Image: PA

Instead it was the Blues who miraculously went through, with Messi missing a penalty and multiple other chances, and then Drogba would of course score the winning spot kick in the final against Bayern Munich.

If only Messi had scored 74 goals that season it would have been a different story.

Image: PA

In fact, Messi's record against Chelsea is actually very poor by his standards and he will be looking to change that in the round of 16 games.

Will Messi break his duck against Chelsea tonight?

Sound off in the comments.

Featured Image Credit:

Topics: Football News, Chelsea, Football, Barcelona, Lionel Messi, Champions League