I must confess that for a rabid Barca fan like me, it was hard to swallow the trashing my favorite football club got from Bayern Munich in the semifinals of the European Champions League.  Painful as it was to witness the Catalans helpless in the two matches that ended with an aggregate score of 7-0, I did not regret for a single moment having awakened at 2:45 a.m. on both occasions to give moral support to what is still considered the best football club in the world by most sports pundits.  Together with all loyal Barca fans, I console myself with the knowledge that FC Barcelona is sure to bag the Spanish League championship after just a few more games.  It was also a consolation (but no excuse) that the best football player in the world today, Lionel Messi, was still suffering from his hamstring injury and could not play at all in the return match in Camp Nou.  As my favorite football commentator Rob Hughes wrote in the International Herald Tribune:  "Barca is wounded without him (Messi), but not only him.  Carles Puyol, Javier Mascherano, Sergio Busquets and Eric Abidal all were missing in defense.  Barcelona properly saluted Munich's superiority but will never know whether it might have won this semifinal if it had been at full strength."