It was either brutal honesty or a concerted mind game.

"After what happened in the first leg, it's unlikely that we'll be progressing to the next round," Max Meyer said.

"Of course we are eliminated," added Christian Fuchs. "There's no point in pretending otherwise."

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As Schalke 04 traveled to Real Madrid to take on the defending champions in the return leg of their round of 16 tie on Tuesday, things did indeed look grim and fairly hopeless, as their own players pointed out publicly. Nobody has forgotten that this matchup ended 9-3 in Real's favor in the same round a year ago. And it was hard to reason away the 2-0 lead the 10-time champions had taken in Gelsenkirchen.

But for a team that was supposed to be eliminated before the game was even played, Schalke sure gave Real a scare in its 4-3 second-leg victory. Certainly, the home team complicated a very manageable task by showing up in a lethargic and largely disinterested mood. They seemed to be engaged in some kind of secret team-wide competition to see who could commit the most turnovers without it leading to a goal. Time and again, possession was surrendered simply and Schalke scampered off on counterattacks.

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That's how this brazen German side, perhaps feeling light in the absence of any pressure or expectations, created the first four chances of the game. On the fifth, they scored. A low 20th-minute cross from Meyer, of all people, which should have been cleared several times during its trajectory, bounced all the way to Fuchs, of all people, at the far post. His shot should have been parried by goalkeeper Iker Casillas but wasn't.

Real nearly went down 2-0 a little later, as Sami Khedira's outstretched arm connected with the ball at the edge of his own area. No penalty or free kick was called. But as they say, we've seen them given.

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In spite of now being just a goal from a tied aggregate score and having lived through several scares, Real couldn't rouse themselves from their slumber. But they equalized all the same. Out of nothing, Cristiano Ronaldo headed home from a Toni Kroos corner in the 25th minute.

Schalke was unperturbed. Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, who scored eight times in just 20 appearances in his lone season at Real but was shipped out in 2009 all the same, intercepted a bad back pass and almost swept in a goal. Then he hit the upright with a massive volley. Finally, in the 40th minute, the Hunter, so nicknamed, cleaned up after Casillas blocked a tame Meyer shot right into the striker's path.

And then, Ronaldo once more, re-earning those two FIFA Ballon d'Ors from the last two years all over. He met a Fabio Coentrao cross on the brink of halftime, gave his two defenders the slip again and smacked home another header.

After halftime, Real's Karim Benzema danced through the penalty area and dinked in a third goal. That made it 3-2 to the home team and 5-3 on aggregate, even though the Frenchman might have been a tad offside when he received the ball. And that seemed to put the game away.

But Schalke mounted one more comeback, as unlikely as the last two.

First, 19-year-old Champions League debutant Leroy Sané struck a wondrous shot into the top corner from the edge of the box for Schalke before the hour, when he was given far too much time and space by the bungling back line. Amid a Schalke onslaught, Huntelaar capitalized beautifully when Luka Modric accidentally played him through his own defense to make it 4-3 off the underside of the bar. Schalke came close again and again. But there was too much damage from the first leg to be undone.

Which brought us back to the latest cries of a crisis emanating from Spain, where any minor dip in form by Barca or Real is an existential quandary. It's now been three games since Real have won one, after a tie with Villarreal and then a loss to Athletic Bilbao in the league, followed by the loss to Schalke on Tuesday. Barca have snuck by them to take the lead in La Liga. And they're already out of the Copa del Rey.

This game underscored why it's so hard to win this tournament, why it took Real a dozen years to win it for a 10th time, in spite of spending hundreds of millions on new players year after year. A bad week, a bad day even, could spell doom.

It very nearly did on Tuesday, in what might have been remembered as the Miracle of Madrid – or some other catchy, historic-sounding moniker – had Schalke gotten that last goal. But Real survived and remains in contention for an 11th European title. Still, their fans let them hear about it, whistling them off the field as the thousands of traveling Schalke supporters danced in jubilation.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.