For many in this Celtic team, Tuesday night’s Champions League opener at home to Real Madrid will be their first experience of Europe’s biggest stage.

The kings of European football come to Celtic Park for the first time in 42 years in what is set to be an enticing fixture between Ange Postecoglou and Carlo Ancelotti’s sides, matched by a raucous atmosphere from the Celtic support.

Matt O’Riley is one of the majority in the team who is set to break his Champions League duck and if selected will likely feature directly up against two of the world’s best in his position in Toni Kroos and Luka Modric.

It’s these nights that O’Riley dreamt about as a young aspiring footballer and he can’t wait to get out there and go toe-to-toe with Real Madrid.

He said: “This is arguably the biggest club in the world, so for someone like myself that has dreamt of playing in a competition of this stature, it’s a dream come true.

'It’s a game I’m really excited to be involved in and one I’ve dreamt of playing in.'

“I know Celtic fans wanted this for years and now we have it, hopefully, we can put on a good show for them.

“For me, I don’t mind who we would go up against first, just going up against the best players in the world is a privilege and we will just go out and there and see what we can do.

“I think all these years of academy football and now in the first team is preparation for nights like this.

"I understand the game is big externally, but on the pitch, you don’t think of that so I feel prepared and so does everyone else.”

The talk throughout the build-up to this game has centred on Celtic’s approach and whether they will take on the European champions in the same attacking manner as they do each week in Scotland.

For O’Riley, there’s only one approach to Tuesday night’s game and that is to attack, be brave, be positive and leave everything out there on the Celtic Park pitch with the ambition of taking all three points.

He added: “It takes bravery regardless of who you play against, there will always be slight scares sometimes because we take risks and against this type of opposition we have to be at our best.

“We don’t change the way we play regardless of the opposition. We may tweak slight things like the amount we press, but in general, it will be the same.

'The aim is to win the game and to impose our football on it.'

"We won’t just go in and try and get a result, we want to impose our game and hopefully, that gets us success, but we won’t finish that 90 minutes without playing the way we want to play.

“We spoke about it today at lunch, if you don’t believe you can win what’s the point? We go into every game believing we can win regardless of the opposition or magnitude of the game.

“I’ve spoken to a few of the staff and they said the atmosphere will be electric but it’s like that every week. Being a night game makes it more special, so it will be bouncing.”

Matt O'Riley: We take on Real Madrid with the belief we can win