Gigi Buffon is in Zurich in his role as Italy’s ‘head of delegation’. He makes no bones about it being another “delicate” moment for the national team.
He knows the public back home are “seeing ghosts everywhere” from past failures in the play-offs in 2017 and 2022.
But Italy need to treat these games like any other. They are seeded and will play the semi-final at home, probably in Bergamo.
Even though Italy could face Sweden, Northern Ireland and North Macedonia in the semis, teams that stopped them going to the World Cup in the past, they are, on paper or in the form book, favourites against all of them.
Optimism, however, is in short supply. The psychological baggage of the last decade is so great that Italy’s biggest challenge in March will be overcoming their own fear of failure.