Moscow, was a big destination for us. Not only because it was the venue for the Champions league Final but also because we needed to show Europe and also the whole world that CHELSEA DESERVES TO BE NAMED AMONG THE BIGGEST CLUB IN THE WORLD. Chelsea is always spoken about as a nouveau-riche club...Chelsea, unlike the other big guns in Europe, do not have a glorious history and neither do they have a tradition of winning silverwares since time immemorial and this is precisely the reason why Chelsea are never the favorites to win a tournament as big as the Champions league. So Moscow was our only chance to quieten the critics and show them that history doesn't matter anything when we have competent players on the field.

So with out hearts full of expectations, we stepped out in the Luzhniki Stadium. We had a mountain to climb, we had Manchester United to face but our motto was to dream in the Impossible. We knew that if we could win the EPL in 2004/05 after a 50 years' gap, we could also achieve this great feat of winning the Champions league. 

Our hopes survived a setback in the 27th minute when Ronaldo defeating Petr cech, converted the cross by Wes Brown into a Manchester United goal...we were trailing by a goal. But we didn't lose trust in ourselves. We knew that we had to fight till the end to snatch victory from the Reds who were in devastating European form after defeating Barcelona in the Semi finals. And we did get back in the Game at the stroke of half time. Chelsea's Mr.Dependable, Frank Lampard, kept his cool as he netted the ball  which had suffered a deflection  from Van Der Sar after a shot from Essien. At half time the scores were level.

We came out of the tunnel in the second half with high aspirations. But again we suffered disappointment as despite Cech's brilliance on the other side of the field, our players missed several chances to put us ahead of the Reds. In the 87th minute, we experienced history being written as Giggs came on to the field replacing Scholes, making the maximum number of appearance for Manchester United. And as the match went on to the extra time we had the confidence that the Luzhinki Stadium will see history written again as we will be crowned as European Champions for the first time.

Our title hopes survived a major shock as Drogba was sent off for flicking Manchester defender Vidic on the face, and as the game finally game to the most dreaded Penalties, it was "do or Die" for the Blues. Against Manchester United, the last time we had a shoot out was last August in the FA community shield when United had emerged victorious and we didn't want a repeat of it this time.

So keeping our fingers crossed, we positioned ourselves. cech infront of the goal, ready to take on the Reds Single handed. It finally started. Tevez stepped up.

Tevez:goal

Ballack: goal.

Carrick: goal.

Belletti: goal.

Ronaldo came up. We knew that it would be a bit of a overconfidence to expect Ronaldo to miss. But still, we hoped against hope that Ronaldo might repeat what he did against Barcelona in the Nou camp semi final. The whole stadium  went quiet. Ronaldo hit the ball and cech dived for the ball-or was it champions league glory? HE SAVED IT!! We could feel the ecstasy of being just a stp away from success.

Lampard: goal.

Hargreaves: goal.

A Cole: goal.

Nani: goal.

It was upto our captain now and we had firm belief in him. He had got us so far and he would be the one to help us to climb the one final step to victory. We could see our name written on the Trophy and the we could feel the wonderful touch of the silverware as we were inching towards a historical triumph. 

Terry shot the ball and Van Der Sar dived in the other direction..."EVERYTHING WAS OVER, WE HAD WON IT" was our 1st reaction until we saw the ball being deflected from the post.

Terry had missed it.

We felt everything going dark as we found ourselves moving away from the title...it was so close and yet so far.. we were under pressure now.

It was just a matter of time before we had to surrender to the mounting pressure and it happened with Anelka's miss. In just 2 minutes, from being crowned the probable Champions, we were the failures. Chelsea had been defeated by Manchester United.

 Our hopes were shattered and our hearts broken and sitting in a country like India which was far from Moscow, there was very little I could do for my team except to offer sympathy as they had nothing left but to bit the dust. But do Chelsea really need sympathy? From being always regarded as the underdogs, they have reached the finals, they have silenced many experts by their game. Each and every minute they have offered us something new. From being down to fenerbache in the 1st leg of the quarter finals, they came back spectacularly to fight Liverpool in the semis where Frank Lampard, just after losing his mother, inspired the team to the ultimate showdown. So what else can we expect? We won as a team, we fought as a team and now that we have lost, we have lost as a team. 

We are truly incomparable and this will just be proved yet again in the next season when the 

BLUE BILLION WILL RISE.