Peter Cech recalls his famous rivalry with Barcelona captain Lionel Messi

In fact, Messi and Cech faced each other nine times between 2006 and 2018.

Leo managed to find a way past the keeper in their last face-to-face encounter.

Petr fondly remembers his heroics against the Barca icon, especially his penalty save in 2012 that denied the Catalans a Champions League final spot.

“It took him a long time to score past me – 10 games in fact as I was an Arsenal player when he eventually did," Petr Cech told Chelsea's official website of his rivalry with Lionel Messi.

"He missed penalties, I made saves, he hit the post, but he never scored past me at Chelsea. It was a pleasure to keep a clean sheet against him. When he had the penalty in the Nou Camp in 2012, that was a defining moment.

"I was thinking about what he could do, what he would do. So my strategy was to wait and wait until I could see where he was going to hit it. So when I moved the way he was going to strike the ball, he knew he had to go high to beat me - but he went too high and it struck the bar.

“That game, in general, was huge. When you’re 2-0 down at the Nou Camp with 10 men and it’s still the first half, you’re thinking it’s going to be a long, long night. My friends who were at the game said after that they had discussed the one position they wouldn’t want to be in on a night like that and they agreed it was the goalkeeper.

"It could’ve got ugly as we’ve seen so often for teams in those situations at the Nou Camp against Barcelona.”

In fact, there were only nine head-to-head encounters between Messi and Cech in 2006-2018, it Transfermarkt's stats are to be believed.

Even though the Barcelona forward failed to find a way past the keeper during the latter's time at Chelsea, Leo managed to break the unwanted trend in their latest meeting when Barca won 2-0 at Arsenal in 2016.