Sitting at his desk in the coach's office-cum-bunker just down the corridor from the dressing-rooms at Lazio's Formello training ground, Alberto Zaccheroni hardly gave the air of a man about to set out on mission impossible.
The man who took over from Dino Zoff a little less than a month ago refuses to be pessimistic about his side's immediate Champions League future, even though he knows Lazio could win their remaining three games and still go out.
Lazio are on a "do-or-die" mission tonight when they host PSV Eindhoven at the Olympic Stadium in Rome. Having lost their first three group games, the Roman club will need a miracle combination of results to progress to the second phase.
Zaccheroni, however, is not worried: "I'd say Lazio are a better team than PSV, a better team than Nantes and better than Galatasaray. We just need to get ourselves back on the right track. I think Lazio are one of the best teams in the world and they can beat any team."
Getting back on the right track is something Lazio finally managed last Saturday when they won their first game in over two months, beating Atalanta 2-0 in Rome. That win came after a miserable run which not only saw three straight Champions League losses but which also saw the club pick up just four draws and one defeat in five Serie A outings.
Furthermore, the crisis of form that prompted Lazio to offload Zoff and replace him with Zaccheroni also developed into a medical problem of epidemic proportions with first-choice players such as striker Hernan Crespo, captain Alessandro Nesta, Jaap Stam, midfielder Diego Simeone, goalkeeper Angelo Peruzzi, and defenders Giuseppe Favalli and Sinisa Mihajlovic all simultaneously unavailable.
With the exception of Simeone, likely to be out for the rest of the season with a cruciate knee ligament injury, most of the injured players are ready again even if Nesta will not be risked this evening, while Crespo will start on the substitutes' bench.
On the day he took over at Lazio, Zaccheroni said it was the will of "destiny" that his first game in charge should be against his old club AC Milan, with which he won the 1999 Italian title and with which he parted company last March.
Did he now think that destiny has been a little cruel to him? "Yes, it certainly seems that way. First we lost four players, out with muscular problems in that 2-0 defeat by Milan. Then against Eindhoven we played well and had the best chances. However, partly it was that we weren't accurate enough, partly we were unlucky and then there was a late debatable penalty incident."
Does he think it an advantage or a disadvantage, that the other three - PSV, Nantes and Galatasaray - are all on six points?
"You just don't know," he said. "What we know is that now we play PSV and we've got to beat them, as for the rest, we'll see later."
Later means yet another clash with Galatasaray, the Turkish champions who have been a bogey side for the former Milan coach. In both the last two seasons, Galatasaray effectively ended Milan's participation in the Champions League, beating them 3-2 in Instanbul in November 1999 and 2-0 again in Instanbul last March.
Is he worried by another clash with Galatasaray? "Three years of Champions League football and three years of Galatasary. In Istanbul, they have hurt me but, mind you, each time Milan went to Istanbul, we were decimated by injuries. I've seen them twice this year, they're a good team, not like last year's side but they're good."
As for Nantes, the side whose 3-1 defeat of Lazio prompted Zoff's sacking and his own appointment, Zaccheroni remains upbeat: "I saw Nantes play against Lazio, they're another good team, they like to play the ball a lot and they have talented individuals but I think Lazio can beat them. I just want my team to be a bit braver, I don't want to see them shooting on goal two or three times but rather much more."
