One of the great joys of being at this World Cup was getting another chance to watch Lionel Messi in the flesh. There has been quite a clamour over the past decade to argue whether he is a greater player than Cristiano Ronaldo, or indeed the other great discussion about the relative merits of Messi v Maradona. In the Maradona debate, the fact that Messi had never won a World Cup is always brought up in discussion even if his goals scored, games played and goals per game have outshone his countryman from the past.

I honestly don’t know the answer to this argument and I would underline that statistics can never tell the true story of players that played in different times, for different standards of teams, in very different circumstances - from adapted rules to quality of playing surfaces. It should and probably just does come down to our own personal preferences, but if Lionel manages to win the World Cup, with a little help from his team-mates this weekend, his argument to be the greatest ever gets a lot more cache.

I watched Messi closely in the game against Australia from inside the Ahmed Bin Ali Stadium both when he was on and off the ball. It was the most perfect lesson in game management you are likely to see. He basically walked through the entire game but knew and understood which moments to come alive and suddenly look like the Messi of five or 10 years ago. He broke Australian hearts that night but they will have understood this was in some ways an honour, to be on the field and making the man have to produce some of great moments again. They pushed him hard.

Messi vs Chelsea

He has been breaking opposition players and fans hearts for a long time! At Chelsea we somehow managed to keep him from scoring for an inordinately long time. He is one of the very few players who have come to Stamford Bridge that I have been desperate to see as much as our own stars on the night. Andres Iniesta and David Silva were similar for me, but then I would love that sort of player wouldn’t I? I felt just as passionate watching Gianfranco Zola, Juan Mata and Eden Hazard each time they graced the field for us. I have got a type!

But we kept him relatively quiet year after year. Whether it was JT twinned with Ricardo Carvalho, Alex or Gary Cahill in the centre of defence (or Branislav Ivanovic and Jose Bosingwa as it ended up in Camp Nou in 2012), the maestro could never get through. Of course they were aided and abetted by the brilliance of Ashley Cole, who was maybe the perfect player to play directly against Leo.

Those duels were a delight even if our hearts were always in our mouths. There was of course the rather important role Petr Cech played in keeping him out, both he and JT can be proud that they were never undone by Messi in their time at Chelsea which included eight games for JT and seven for Petr.

It also helped that through those years from 2006 to 2012, with eight Messi appearances and no goals, we had alongside those mentioned above some of the toughest players to get by in the history of the sport such as Claude Makelele and Michael Essien.

Every single player mentioned would have been proud to walk off the pitch and know they had managed to blunt the sharpest instrument football had. All good things come to an end and eventually Messi did score in both of his last two games for Barcelona against the Blues. I remember thinking during that first game even Messi can’t get past Toni Rudiger, but he didn’t need to. An Iniesta pass and Messi finally broke his duck from 16 yards, he didn’t go past anyone, but his rocket shot did.

He was finally breaking Chelsea hearts and it has continued during this World Cup with our own Mateo Kovacic having to watch while Messi shredded the previously imperious Croatian defence. The penalty was one thing, but his general play was on a different planet. The years seem to just slip off him as he toyed with magnificent defenders such as Gvardiol, who could in time himself become one of the world’s great defenders.

The third goal was a classic case in point and for me there was a moment of deep recognition when he turned the Croatian youngster in the box. That specific move was my favourite trick throughout my entire career. I worked on it assiduously and it got me a lot of goals, assists and penalties. For a moment I felt a warm glow that we had something in common, before the acceptance dawned that Lionel has another couple of dozen skills of that calibre, that us mere humans could never hope to emulate.

I was fortunate enough to play against some fabulous players in my career, including Diego Maradona, and there are very few who you think I am just pleased to be on the same field as them. Alongside Diego, Lionel Messi will be one of them, one that most players will one day say to their kids, ’yes I played against him,’ and be proud of it however good a player they were themselves.

Blues facing off

So will he be breaking at least one more former Chelsea heart this weekend? Olivier Giroud might not have been at his best in the semi-final, but I suspect there were a few more gears left against a Moroccan side that were in many ways the star team of the tournament. They were for me anyway, but they just ran out of steam and fit players. The BBC TV chaps were waxing lyrical about Ziyech, Amrabat, Ounahi and co. which delighted me as I have been boring you all on this page about them for a couple of weeks, particularly Ounahi.

So Hakim Ziyech and Mateo Kovacic will be facing off in the third-place play off, a painful game in many ways but one still worth winning, for the medal! They would rather be facing Messi and his mates, but like us who have been lucky to watch him, one day they will know that just playing on the same field as him, in some ways, was among the best things you could do in the game in this era.