This was meant to be a column on how useless the Premier League clubs are in the Champions League and how good Juventus, taking on Monaco in the semi-final, have become.
The premise was this: in 2009, Chelsea drew 2-2 at the Stadio Olimpico in front of 28,000 fans to progress to the quarter-finals. But the Juventus fans that night hailed their brave losers, applauding their valiant efforts raucously.
Yet for those of us who had grown up with Juventus as some kind of mythical, unbeatable force in European football, it was disconcerting. The whole point about Manchester's United victory at the Stadio delle Alpi in 1999 was that it was so unexpected; Juventus were the past masters of those kind of games.