Puyol’s debut wasn’t a particularly happy one though, as, wearing the number 32 shirt, he suffered Barça’s 0-4 defeat to Dynamo Kiev, with Shevchenko scoring a hat trick.

Two winners medals

That defeat was the exception rather than the rule of course and Puyol has gone on to pick up two Champions League trophies, in Paris and Rome, under Rijkaard and Guardiola.

Two goals

Puyol has scored just twice in the competition, once in the Nou Camp and once on the Daimler Arena in Stuttgart.

In the first game of the 2006/07 group stage, Barça scored five against Levski Sofia and Puyol got the fourth. That wasn’t just the first goal for Puyol in the Champions League, but also the first game that the team wore the UNICEF logo in their shirts.

The following season, Puyol got his second goal, also in the group stage against Stuttgart in Germany. He opened the scoring with a goal from a dead ball situation and moments later Messi scored Barça’s second.

Goal line stop

The most famous image of the captain in Europe though, has to be his goal line stop in the group stage game at the Camp Nou against Lokomotiv Moscow in the 2002/03 season. With the game tied at 0-0, Puyol made a great stop on the line from the Ghana player Obiohra, launching himself across the goal to knock the ball away with the club badge on his chest. Moments later, Frank de Boer scored the goal that Barça needed to qualify for the next round of the competition.