We travel to Spain to face Real Madrid in the first leg of the last-four tie tomorrow, in arguably our biggest game of the season so far.

Against such a difficult and experienced side in a match on the biggest stage, the temptation is always there to focus your game on countering your opponents’ strengths.

However, Tuchel believes it is exactly the opposite approach that is needed, remembering what we are good at and trusting the methods that got us this far in the Champions League to begin with.

‘Be ourselves, that is the strategy once you arrive here,’ he explained. ‘The higher you climb on the level, the more you have to rely on yourself, rely on your strengths and do the things that make you comfortable, which are proven that they work, and we have these things as a team.

‘This is what we try to do on the best level, there is no other approach for a match like this. Hopefully we don’t overthink it, we don’t want to overdo it. The challenge is to be ourselves and to be the best version of ourselves for 90 minutes tomorrow.’

One of the things which has served us so well during our run to the semi-finals, as well as in domestic competition, has been our excellent defensive record, having conceded just three goals in our 10 European matches so far this season.

With seven Champions League clean sheets to our name, our German head coch explained what it is that makes this Chelsea side so hard to score against.

‘The most important things are the quality and commitment of the players,’ said Tuchel. ‘Quality explains itself. Commitment is being ready to do the things which are necessary to help your team-mates, cover your team-mate when he’s going into a challenge.

‘Playing your role 100 per cent reliably, this is commitment. Can the defensive guys rely on midfielders? Can the midfielders rely on the strikers? This is the huge effort that we put into the games, physically, and into defending.

‘Then the next thing is courage. We play very brave, we defend up front. Never forget, sometimes it is the best defence to have the ball, so it comes also down to quality of ball possession, quality of counter-pressing. For good counter-pressing you need to be brave high up the pitch, you need to position yourselves very disciplined to not allow counter-attacks.

‘It is also about commitment to block shots and to really have the mentality to not allow shots on goal. Then we have good goalkeepers.

‘We are very happy with the number of chances we concede because we produce these numbers regularly and the clean sheets feel well-deserved. It’s like attacking, it’s a team effort and it will always stay like this in football, which is the good thing about it, and we are ready to try for another clean sheet tomorrow.’