FAMOUS Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano once suggested that when the beauty of football reveals itself “admirers are left pitying their unborn grandchildren who will never see them.”

There was nothing beautiful, however, in Chelsea’s Champions League semi-final against Barcelona on Tuesday night. It was nerve-racking, if not romantic, at times.

And it left a huge question mark on whether Lionel Messi is among the pantheon of football legends and rather left me pitying those who didn’t have a chance to see Ronaldinho lighting up the Nou Camp during his stint with the Catalans.

If they had, they would have probably agreed that Messi isn’t Barca’s best ever player. Or for that matter, he doesn’t come alongside the likes of Pele and Diego Maradona as the best exponents of the beautiful game.

Chelsea, in 180 minutes of football in a week, had managed to keep the World Player of the Year quiet with devastating effect.

So much so that when Messi had a chance to put Barcelona within striking distance of the final in Munich, he went from being mercurial to misfiring.

With Chelsea down to 10 men and trailing 2-1 on the night, Messi was handed a golden opportunity after Cesc Fabregas was brought down by Didier Drogba in the penalty area.

Neither Chelsea players nor his Barcelona teammates could believe when he implausibly crashed his spot-kick against the bar at a time when his team and the 95,000 fans packed at the Nou Camp desperately needed a goal.

And when the curtains game down on a gruelling contest, Messi was rooted to his spot, a forlorn figure in the midst of Chelsea’s celebrations.

There is an old adage in football that the best players make their own luck.

So, if Messi is counted as being unlucky for being unable to score in his last three games — arguably the three most important matches in Barca’s season, he isn’t amongst the all-time greats.

Barcelona lost 1-0 to Chelsea in the semi-final first-leg last week before they virtually conceded the La Liga title to bitter rivals Real Madrid who defeated them 2-1 on the weekend and after Chelsea plucked out a 2-2 draw in the second-leg, the Catalans’ reign as European champions was well and truly over.

With his supply lines of Xavi and Anders Iniesta closed down by both Real and Chelsea, Messi dropped further and further back to pick up the ball — as he frequently does for Argentina, to little effect.

And that is where his individual talent comes into question.

Messi was not Messi as we know him to be. That is what Ronaldinho was not. In terms of individual brilliance, Barcelona’s former number 10 was miles ahead of his successor. And he depicted what Galeano calls the ‘beauty of football’ in the biggest of matches.

In 2005, Barcelona crashed out of the Champions League at the hands of Chelsea but Ronaldinho bent the ball into the bottom corner with the outside of his boot after calling the bluff of Chelsea’s defenders for a spectacular goal.

A year later, it was his goal that sent Chelsea crashing out of the Champions league when he sped past John Terry before firing an unstoppable shot past Petr Cech en route to Barca’s title winning run.

And then against Real, Ronaldinho scored a stunning brace with great endeavour to receive a resounding ovation from the Santiago Bernabeu faithful.

Messi might never be able to receive that. Nor will he be able to eclipse Ronaldinho’s Herculean efforts for the Catalans as his former team-mate Juliano Belletti noted recently.

“Ronaldinho had opponents who magnified his peak even more — he was up against [Zinedine] Zidane, [Luis] Figo. He also earned me many titles,” Belletti told SporTV.

“Messi has much more help at Barcelona. If I had to chose between Ronaldinho at that time or Messi now, I’d chose Ronaldinho.”