Having lost the first leg at Stamford Bridge 3-1, his Chelsea side know we need to beat Real Madrid by at least two goals at their Estadio Santiago Bernabeu home to have any chance of progressing into the last four of the competition.

With the combination of the aggregate scoreline, the daunting venue and opponents as experienced in the latter stages of the Champions League as anyone, our head coach has no illusions about the size of the task ahead.

‘It is one of the biggest challenges to perform as the away team at the Bernabeu,’ said Tuchel. ‘It is even more difficult if you have to earn a certain result, if you need to win with a minimum of two goals, or maybe even a three-goal goal difference. That makes it almost impossible and very difficult.

‘The task is incredibly hard and the challenge is incredibly high given the circumstances of the first leg and where we play and against who we play and at what stage we play this kind of match.’

However, that does not mean the German has given up hope of getting the result we want in Spain, and he even believes the big occasion could help bring the best out of the Blues.

‘But still it’s worth trying and it’s still a stage where you can also over perform. We need to over perform. It’s not easy, it’s the opposite, but at the same time it’s a big experience to learn from and maybe an experience to take and over perform.’

That leaves Tuchel playing a delicate balancing act, between dreaming of doing the impossible with a comeback that would rate among the very best in the club’s history, and maintaining a calm and sensible focus on what his team needs to do, believing we will need a bit of both to succeed in Spain.

‘It’s always allowed to dream,’ he added. ‘It’s sometimes important to imagine things and to dream about it, but it will not shift the focus from the fact that we need to deliver and we need to be ready tonight.

‘We will support our team and we will try hard. It’s worth trying. It’s the beauty of the game that everything is possible always. So we will arrive and try everything because it’s worth trying and from there we see and hopefully we have a match where belief grows within the match and by our actions.

‘Hopefully we can fulfil our dream, live up to our dream, but realistically we have to invest a lot and be on our very top level.’