Messi's Champions League nightmare since 2016
Messi won the Champions League in 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2015 at Barcelona, but he will now have to wait another year at least before he can get his hands on the trophy again
Earlier this season, Lionel Messi expressed his desire to win another Champions League trophy, this time as a Paris Saint-Germain player following his move from Barcelona last summer.
However, PSG were eliminated from the competition after losing 3-1 to Real Madrid - and 3-2 on aggregate - at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu on Wednesday night.
"It's everyone's dream," Messi told France Football.
"The club have been working towards this goal for years and lately they have come close. From a personal point of view, I would love to win the Champions League again, as I said when I was still at Barcelona. Because it is a very good competition, [one which is] very difficult to win, but I think this group of players can achieve it."
Messi won the Champions League in 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2015 at Barcelona, but he will now have to wait another year at least before he can get his hands on the trophy again.
"I said that if we continued in this way it would be difficult to win the Champions League and it is clear that we couldn't even win LaLiga," he said back in 2020, when he completed five years without winning the trophy.
"We have to change a lot and do a lot of self-criticisms and not thinking that we lost because the opponents were better."
Messi has now gone seven seasons without lifting the Champions League trophy. It all started in the 2015/16 quarter-finals when Barcelona were knocked out by Atletico Madrid.
A year later, Barcelona managed to complete a glorious comeback against PSG in the last 16, but they then lost to Juventus in the quarter-finals.
Rome, Liverpool, Lisbon...
His toughest eliminations in the Champions League came in the following three seasons. Barcelona beat Roma 4-1 at the Camp Nou, but lost 3-0 in Rome in the quarter-finals and were knocked out on away goals.
The next season something similar happened, as this time they beat Liverpool 3-0 on home soil before losing 4-0 in England.
In 2020, they were forced to dispute a single-leg quarter-final due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw them lose 8-2 to Bayern Munich in Lisbon.
Then, Messi asked Barcelona to release him from his contract, but the club were not willing to let the Argentine leave that summer.
He ended up staying at the Camp Nou under Ronald Koeman and Barcelona reached the last 16, where they were beaten 4-1 by a Kylian Mbappe-inspired PSG at the Camp Nou before drawing 1-1 in the second leg in Paris.
"Everyone says we're the big favourites," Messi told MARCA back in November, not long after joining PSG. "I won't deny that we're one of the candidates, but we still need to work on some things to be a really strong team."
