Didier Drogba I love you no longer. Despite Rico's expressions of understanding and non-judgemental declaration towards the behaviour of the indulging Ivorian in Barcelona last week, the same individual, I cannot believe it, threw all those Christian exhortations back in my face with the worst tantrum ever seen in Stamford Bridge, and let me assure you, that is some achievement.
The man appears completely devoid of comprehending the trauma and inner turmoil endured by my very self to in order to facilitate the arrival at such an admirable junction in my spiritual development that, initially, surprised me greatly, and then enabled me to expunge myself of so many demons that I was beginning to believe that I was ready to transcend to the spirit world itself.
You have to understand. I have been involved in professional football for so many years that I had long harboured thoughts that my soul had emigrated to the outer edges of the universe and I would have to spend the next couple of lives traversing the wilderness in an effort to reconcile myself with that exquisite source of internal splendour.
On Wednesday, the antics of the tumbling tornado, who gives one the distinct impression that he was born on a trampoline, obligated me to simply accept, with enormous humility, that my physical and sacred selves are still navigating along very different planes.
The disaffected Didier just could not allow me the grace to settle properly into my new image, he simply could not. Instead he had to percolate my blood to an even higher degree on Wednesday evening and in the process dismantle my illusions of spiritual grandeur.
However, contained in this process of dismantlement there lies a message, a reminder that even in the midst of the chaos, there are small allegorical anecdotes that should not be obliterated in the mayhem.
The tantrums of Wednesday were a long time coming. At the very top level of professional football there is only one type of discipline, and that is perfect discipline. To be the very best in any sport there is either perfect discipline or there is indiscipline.
Increasingly in the contemporary world of professional football it is commonplace to ignore, or at least diminish, the responsibility of management in relation to the behaviour of players. The people running too many football clubs nowadays are not versed in the finer traditions of the beautiful game. There is too much ego in action.
Hence, managers and players are allowed the run of themselves and it is purely results that dictate the mood of a club as opposed to the integrity of all concerned.
Chelsea have known, and allowed, the ego of several players to run unchecked and even more disgracefully, change managers in the lemming-like desire to maintain the commitment of pampered players. In essence it is ego feeding ego and feeding upon ego in an almost incestuous attempt to attain the Holy Grail.
So Chelsea should have had a penalty in the game, and only one I still insist. And Didier the Great should have scored the easiest chance of the game. And the biggest crime of the evening, in a football sense, was allowed slip away, conveniently, into the night air to be lost among the bitter recriminations.
This crime being that a squad of the highest paid footballers in the world and the manager of great repute, failed to possess the courage to grab hold of a game against 10 fatiguing players, and see the game out in the Barcelona half of the field.
This world class squad of mollycoddled whiners played with the attitude of a lower division team by packing their own penalty area for almost the complete duration of two games and proffered defensive discipline as their weapon of choice, and their excuse, in the greatest club competition across the globe. It doesn't work for me I am afraid.
Passion and disappointment were the reasons that the Chelsea players reacted in the style they did according to the manager and many sections of the English media.
Two emotions that every pro footballer experiences, and controls, year in and year out during their long careers were allowed run roughshod over respect and responsibility for the game that provides their million pound salaries and for the countless number of people around the world who pay their hard earned, and quickly disappearing, money to garnish these players with their magnificent lifestyles.
It is easy to possess discipline during a game when that game is going your way. It is easy to knuckle down and accept the ebbs and flows as they occur if you are still ahead of the game.
However, it is far from easy when your golden egg is whisked from you hands by a last minute goal that leaves no time for recovery. It is in these moments that you find out just what perfect discipline is and how it should be articulated and displayed.
And the irony of ironies, that delicious contradiction that makes sport so appealing, irrefutably implies that had that perfect discipline been put in place when it should have been, by a competent Board of Directors and a secure and fully backed manager, then it is almost a certainty that the last minute goal would not have been conceded.
We have all been guilty of losing our discipline. Despite my feelings that the better team won over the two legs I felt for the Chelsea players in the manner of their defeat. I have been there and felt the pain, as I am sure almost every one of you reading this piece has done, if not in sport then in life itself.
