Asier Del Horno, the former Chelsea full-back, felt he’d run out of gas. The first 60 minutes had left Del Horno and most of his Valencia colleagues wheezing. Though Del Horno was not offering it as an excuse, he had been back in action barely three weeks after a long injury. Chelsea’s Joe Cole, meanwhile, had been back in first-team action after a five-month lay-off for barely seven days. For a large portion of the next 47 minutes Cole ran Del Horno ragged.

So, spot the difference. Del Horno reckoned that by the end of the Champions League quarter-final between his previous and present employers, you could measure the difference in yards, territory, as if it were a game of American football or rugby. “They just kept gaining metre upon metre,” said Del Horno of a second half where Valencia’s players experienced the sort of claustrophobia they like to think they can impose on the visitors to their intimidating home ground, the Mestalla.

“With that strong midfield of theirs they picked up all our clearances, and in the end they pegged us back. We had talked about the dangers from their set-pieces but we still struggled to control their aerial game. It’s hard when you are up against a team that just pushes you like that.”

At this stage of the season, stamina intimidates. Chelsea had fallen behind in both legs of the tie, but became the first British team in eight attempts to win at the Mestalla. Within the comebacks would be several tales of individual resurrection: Cole’s season, Andriy Shevchenko’s reputation. Then there is Michael Essien, whose 91st-minute goal would propel Chelsea to their third Champions League semi-final in four years. Essien was playing his first match for a month, a knee injury having kept him out. He would in effect play two games against Valencia on Tuesday: one in midfield, where he imagines he belongs; the second, after half-time, at right-back, a site Jose Mourinho governs like an intolerant landlord, evicting tenants short-term in favour of his trusted Proteus, Essien. Even yesterday, four days after the event, one Spanish newspaper was still celebrating the “Ghanaian superman, a force of nature who plays football”. Del Horno was in awe. He had been covering the flank from where Essien struck. “We were thinking about extra time,” the Valencia player said. “Essien overlapped perfectly. Maybe they just had more petrol. All the work we’d done went down the drain.”

By then, Valencia felt utterly drained. “Physically, they are so powerful,” said Joaquin, the winger, “the way they ran in the second half was outrageous. They were making chances every other minute.” He wasn’t that far off. Chelsea had 18 shots at goal, 60% of possession, figures that sit awkwardly with the notion of Mourinho’s spare, minimalist, dry football.

Chelsea’s spring momentum also acts as rebuke to the manager’s long, loud complaints about sparse resources and insufficient cover that accompanied the coincidence of two or three absences through injury earlier in the season. If Chelsea have become famously good at recovering in the course of 90 minutes, specialists in the art of the late goal, they appear just as expert in recovering fitness. Essien had played the majority of his previous match, an FA Cup-tie against Tottenham Hotspur, with the knee complaint that would keep him out until last Tuesday. Cole, absent since November, had been in full training for only week before his decisive introduction at the Mestalla.

“For me,” said Cole, “anything that happens this year will be a bonus. All the medical people said I wasn’t going to play again this season. But the surgeons have done a great job on my foot. To come into a game like that was hard, but I was pleased.” At half-time, he had been told to alter the strategy. Instantly he felt at home, recognising the routines around him.

“It’s because we’ve been together a long time now, and we’re an experienced team. The movement and everything was better in the second half. We were always going to win given the way we come out and really got hold of the game. It was a good performance as well as a good result.” Had it been a gamble asking Cole, gingerly stepping back from injury, to change the game-plan? “It is difficult to come back because I’d more or less been out all season,” he said, “and I had to hit the ground running. I had a couple of tasters [two previous appearances as a second-half replacement], but I’d only been training a week. Still, I felt I gave the team a good bit of movement when I came on, a good bit of zip and that.

“I’m getting a little fitter. When you come back from any injury you pick up little niggles but it’s going well. And there’s no hiding now, no games to run into it. I want to get back into the starting lineup, because when I left the team I was starting, so I won’t feel my rehab is complete until I’m starting regularly again. The great moments are when you win games like this. I enjoyed it.” His attitude? “Head down,” he smiled, “battling away.”

Suddenly, it was even possible to view Shevchenko through an altered lens. The striker, en route to his fourth European Cup semi-final in five years - the other three with Milan - had scored his second equaliser in as many rounds of the competition, his third goal in five Champions League matches. It is for that sort of return, in European company, that the Ukrainian was hired last July. “When you change team, change country, change football it takes four or five months,” Shevchenko explained, “and you find it difficult. Now I feel much better, more confident on the pitch and more understanding of the other players.” For which, it may be noted, he offered credit to Mourinho. “He builds the players up with belief. I think you could say he’s a great manager, with a strong mentality who gives off character.”

Yes, Shevchenko added, the Chelsea Quadruple was on. Cole was careful not to actually forecast four trophies. But he did offer a helpful idea for the kings of the comeback: “If we can just get the way we start games right . . .”