While gathering opinions from sources I came across a quote that summed it all up.

"The greatest group of players on earth were beat by a better team on this evening."

I tried to find where that came from, but I failed to find it; but it described what occured at the Santiago Bernabéu on Wednesday night.

Reverse psychology and Madrid believed the hype
The team as well as the local media bought the words that Chelo Delgado and a host of others said about Real Madrid in the days leading up to the match. Claude Puel's Boys played the role of sheep in wolves clothing as they complimented Real Madrid for their lineup, their history, and their scary scoring proposition.

The usual suspects, Marca and As, were leading running into battle with the white flag not realizing that Lyon came in with one simple concept: don't fix what's broken.

If this strategy worked against a fully loaded Madrid side at the Stade Gerland, why wouldn't if work for them on the road where the 12th man and the ghost of Juanito usually betrays a group of players.

They believed the hype
I am proponent of La Liga, but I can also find the defects that it has as well. If there is one thing that teams 3-20 have in common is that they allow Barca and Madrid the room to roam. These types of teams are deadly in reduced space, forget about when they have acres to jaunt.

The six-spot that they put on Villarreal and the epic rally against Sevilla are tarnished now that they are out of the Champions League. They do have a value in the overall scheme of things, they are in first place but that is not their primary objective- until referee Nicola Rizzoli blew the final whistle.

It is easy to bully the teams in your league, but how do you fair against the big boys in Europe? That is the biggest failure of the Madrid era.

Great teams don't play for results they play to win. This club was nowhere close to being that battling side that was on the pitch on Saturday against Sevilla during those final 30 minutes. Real Madrid looked to find a result and got burned in the end.

Great teams are also aware that there is dirty work that needs to be done. Real Madrid didn't do that. César Delgado was key in the Lyon goal as he took up the central defenders in the marks and had the ball bounce off of him perfectly to Miralem Pjanic and that leads to the next topic.

Defense wins titles
When Florentino Pérez brought in Raúl Albiol he showed that he learned from his first administration. But just like Fabio Cannavaro and Walter Samuel, the personnel following through on their respective assignments are what make a defender great, too. Real Madrid's defense has shown gross breaches in their assignments and they have led to goals. They have shown that they are vulnerable, but the offense has been so explosive this season that it has masked those shortcomings.

On Wednesday, Lyon's backline outplayed their Spanish counterparts. With the exception of Guti's assist to Cristiano Ronaldo, Lyon defenders were always found in the right place at the right time. There was no way Cris would catch Ronaldo in a foot race and the Portuguese star slotted the ball right in the five-hole.

With the exception of some early threats, that was all Madrid got.

They handcuffed Guti in their defensive third and forced Ronaldo to go wide. Kaká was put in a position where he had to dish off (mostly backwards) to a teammate. They pushed up when they had to and neutralized Sergio Ramos and Ronaldo in the air.

The Madrid backline was suspect at best and Ezequiel Garay was caught in the most compromising positions a defender can be in:

Garay lost Pjanic at the top of the box when César Delgado put the ball in the box to Lisandro López. He then went to defend López thinking he would hold the ball to turn around and shoot, thus allowing the Bosnian teenager to cleanly receive the one-time pass and shoot on goal. It does sound like a condemnation of the young Argentine, but the defense as a whole did not collapse on this and act as a unit. Garay just happened to be the one that looked bad on that play. Defense wins championships. Defense loses them, too.

After that Real Madrid did little and nothing to affect Hugo Lloris. Lyon did waste two incredible counterattacks to ice the game late. Delgado blasted a one-on-one with Iker Casillas wide. That second goal would have sent the already angry Merengue faithful storming out of the stadium.

The Verdict?
First of all, you have to applaud Lyon for their effort on the pitch throughout the 180 minutes. It was a team effort in every sense of the word and it taught the "ultimate team" a huge lesson in the process.

As far as Real Madrid, for the short term there will repercussions as there should be. There are 260 million reasons why Madrid fans should be angry. They did not joyfully spend that type of money in order to win the league title. There is that and the fact that their archrivals have cast a shadow that can only be dispelled by equaling the feat. But they will do it only one way- together.

Whether they do it next year or not is another story, but there is a great deal of talent. Yet the greatest lesson that was learned on this evening as the best talent out there was truly beat by a better team, whether paper says it or not.