Chelsea 1 Barca 0

I was going to publish earlier, I usually press 'publish' without thinking about it too much, but this time the last line saved was 'but it is important to concentrate more, by analogy, on Chelsea's almost non-existent chances against Barcelona tonight'.

Puyol is a great footballer, he's old, he's ugly, he's a lion. The way Drogba and Puyol intertwined in this footballing odyssey at Stanford Bridge in the pouring rain (I was soaked, Julie arrived soaked, we chased around for a decent pub, ended in the Trench as of old, noted all other pubs round here now full of youthful flat beret burlesque enthusiasts with talk of becoming film editors, retreated to the hotel at half time, encountered curious arseholes who thought 'the best team should win and it's obvious who they are' wanted to biff them instantly but in respect of two thousand years of civilization, held off, settled down to something like a middle class Martin Parr) each helping each other up off the pitch over and over, was fantastic to watch, over and over again, they helped each other up, like two ancient warriors, like something out of Homer indeed, Hector and Achilles I reckon. Tonight's battle seemed epic. I don't like it that my team (by extrapolation, our architecture in the biggest sense, whatever) have become what they are, but it is clear that you can still get to the most basic expression of the sport, even with all the money and all the crap, you still get wonderful stuff, and Chelsea were the better team, because they were better tactically in the manner of great organizers of forces big and small.