This Week in Football History: A Champions League thriller and Ronaldinho's toe-poke

Everything about his body shape is unnatural, but only Ronaldinho could score such a goal.

Between 2004-06 Ronaldinho was largely untouchable as the world's best player. Adrian North looks back on an incredible Champions League game from 2005 that is mostly remembered for one piece of Brazilian genius...

March 8, 2005 - Chelsea 4-2 Barcelona, Stamford Bridge.

In yesterday's piece I described Dennis Bergkamp's goal as a magic trick. A goal of such absurd skill that multiple viewings from half a dozen angles are required to comprehend the genius of it.

But where Bergkamp's goal against Newcastle is a magic trick of unparalleled pre-meditation what Ronaldinho pulled off on March 8, 2005 was pure unique inspiration.

And this is the way Ronaldinho played the game - he simply made it up as he went along. Every elastico or roulette he pulled off was seemingly as easy for him in a Champions League knockout match as it would have been back on the beaches of his hometown of Porto Alegre.

Although his legacy is often elevated to a higher plane than he perhaps deserves - he's nowhere near the greatest ever, and he's not even the best of my generation - the playboy Brazilian is by a country mile the most creative and imaginative footballer of the last 20 years. Like Brazil's other flawed idol Garrincha, Ronaldinho played the game with the goal of entertainment being paramount to the goal of winning.

And while I could probably find enough hair-raising Ronaldinho moments to include a highlight of his every week none of his goals were arguably more remarkable than his toe poke against Chelsea in the 2005 Champions League first knockout round.

No other goal of his better captures the maverick off-the-cuff inspiration of the man. Toe-punts are suppose to be ugly, the sign of the unsophisticated brute who never took their school PE lessons seriously. David Nugent and Oliver Bierhoff were these type of kids, but only in Brazil could the symbol of hideous playground football be turned into something of such art.

Oscar's goal in the World Cup opener was a decent effort, Ronaldo's toe won a World Cup semi-final and even Scotland's David Narey once scored this screamer of a toe-poke against Brazil's great 82 side. But none of these were as beautiful as Ronaldinho's effort.

It's the little tap-dance he does before he strikes it that makes it all the more remarkable. A man toying with his opponents, opponents who had one of the best defences and goalkeeper of the modern era.

And there is no better compliment to the raw talents of Ronaldinho than the fact that this goal is often not remembered as being part of a losing effort. Which is a disservice to what was one of Chelsea's greatest performances of the past decade. Having scored three goals in the first 19 minutes Mourinho's men were pinned back by Ronaldinho's single-handed revolt before John Terry's 75th minute header saw the Blues win the game 4-2, and the tie 5-4. Below are the full highlights.

But still, to anyone without a Chelsea persuasion, Ronaldinho's toe-poke remains as one of the lasting memories from a rather remarkable Champions League season.