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Italy’s World Cup play-off semi-final with Northern Ireland has given Gennaro Gattuso sleepless nights.

For four months now, Italy have known what stands between them and a first World Cup since 2014.

Northern Ireland await in the play-off semi-final, and the winners will face Wales or Bosnia-Herzegovina for a place in Group B alongside co-hosts Canada, Switzerland and Qatar.

For the four-time winners it seems almost unthinkable they would fall short.

Yet the same was said four years ago against North Macedonia, and again against Sweden before that.

As a player, Gattuso did not sleep before big games. It’s similar as a manager but he now has the aid of sleeping pills from his doctor.

Otherwise, he says, “at 4.30 or 5am I wake up and I’m wide-eyed like a bat”.

Gattuso is carrying the weight of a nation on his shoulders. It’s a big responsibility.

The former AC Milan midfielder stepped into the role to replace Luciano Spalletti in June, and has won five of his six matches.

“I’ve been coaching for a number of years now, but certainly this game is the most important fixture of my coaching career so far,” said Gattuso.

“I’m prepared and, believe me, I’m not thinking about things going badly, I’m thinking positively.

“I want to think big, and we certainly will compete and we’ll see how things come out.”

He has admiration from O’Neill, who in 2012 was tasked with a similar job of trying to lift a Northern Ireland side at a low point.

Four years later they qualified for the Euros.

“The pressure of managing Italy is a lot different from the pressure of managing Northern Ireland,” O’Neill said.

“I have admiration for him coming in and taking the job at the time that he did, after the previous manager leaving after two games and then having to try to reverse a poor result in the first game for Italy away in Norway.

Throughout Gattuso’s press conference, Gianluigi Buffon sat quietly at the side of the room and watched his World Cup-winning team-mate speak.

Now Italy’s technical director, Buffon played a key role in appointing Gattuso to replace Spalletti in June, and he is also fully aware of the pressure that is on the shoulders of the Italians.

In contrast, by the time O’Neill arrived for his press conference, a storm had rolled into Bergamo and the blistering sunshine, which the thousands of travelling fans had been lapping up, was replaced by lightning and thunder, which was so loud it could be heard in the media room when O’Neill was speaking.

If the game on Thursday is as dramatic as the changing weather, then we will all be in for a treat.

O’Neill says his young squad will play without fear.

“I have a lot of belief in this group of players and it will be a young team that will take the field.

“I think the benefits you get with youth is a lack of fear. We have everything to gain in the game, there’s no doubt about that.

“Over the past two years they have really grown and played a lot of international football.

There is a lot on the line for Italy, and emotion is set to play a big role in Bergamo.

Gazzetta dello Sport, one of Italy’s biggest newspapers, ran an interview with 2006 World Cup-winning manager Marcello Lippi, who said Gattuso reminded him of himself as a manager.

That, for Gattuso, “brought a tear to my eye”.

Northern Ireland’s fight and desire was a constant theme in Gattuso’s press conference, and it is clear he wants his side to match that on Thursday.

As he said, “we are the masters of our own fate”.

“First and foremost, it’s up to us.

“We have to go out there on the pitch and if we show in the stadium that we’re on the money and we don’t have any fear, then we can’t ask anything of anyone.

“We know very well what we need to do. We need to make sure that we’re ready for this game, both physically and mentally.”

For O’Neill, he knows his squad have the belief that can pull off something special.

“I think we have to realise that we’ve done incredibly well to be at this position. There’s a lot of bigger nations than us that are not at this point in the competition.

“Being the smaller nation and with the expectation that sits with the home nation, we come into the game a little bit looser, and with a little bit more freedom in ourselves.

Are the first signs of Arsenal‘s reliance on Bukayo Saka starting to show?

Arsenal’s defeat by Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final was the 50th game of their gruelling season as their hopes of a quadruple were dashed.

The Gunners are still having an excellent season and are in a great position to pick up a trophy at the end of the campaign.

They are in a commanding position in the Premier League, in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup and at the same stage of the Champions League, with their loss to City only their fourth in all competitions this season.

Saka captained Arsenal for the defeat by City and his performance, along with his recent form, has been called into question by supporters and pundits as the Gunners missed out on winning a first piece of silverware since 2020.

“That pressure to win trophies can tally up and make it difficult,” former Manchester United and England striker Wayne Rooney said when speaking about Saka’s form.

“I think he has struggled this season. He has played a lot of games in his career already. I think we all know there is more there.”

Part of the reason that Saka’s form has been called into question is because of the high standards and impressive performances expected from the Arsenal winger.

The 24-year-old signed a new five-year deal with his boyhood club in February as they moved to secure his future for the prime years of his career.

With Arsenal’s American ownership and the globalisation of football, Saka is their franchise player.

But, with that profile and the club’s reliance on him, when things are not clicking, the questions come.

The England international has scored two goals since the turn of the year. He has played 17 games and missed three matches with a hip injury.

And, before his goal in the 2-2 draw against Wolves last month, when Saka played as a number 10, he had not found the net for 15 games in all competitions. He has scored six league goals in 27 appearances this season.

Saka has played a lot of football in his career. The appearance against City in the final was his 305th for Arsenal in all competitions.

But that is exactly what his manager Mikel Arteta wants from him: reliability.

In 2022, when asked about giving Saka a rest, the Arsenal boss pointed at the number of games the elite players in football play.

“Look at the top players in the world. They play 70 matches – every three days – and make the difference and win the game,” he said.

There are reasons why Saka may not be in full flow at the moment.

Saka has only nine goals and assists combined in the league this season, which means it is not one of the standout campaigns of his career, but the underlying expected goals (xG) numbers suggest that he is a bit unlucky not to have a few more to his name.

His talent and threat from the right wing is not new, and opposition defences often use two or sometimes three defenders to shut him down.

That means he can shift the ball to a team-mate in space to make something happen, but that does not always mean he gets the numbers which reflect the danger he brings in attack.

Another reason is that the Arsenal right side has been plagued by injuries this season.

Captain Martin Odegaard has had a broken season, suffering two knee and two shoulder injuries that have limited him to 13 starts in the league.

Ben White has also suffered with injury this season, with Arteta also preferring to use Jurrien Timber when he is fit.

The right side of the Arsenal attack was one of the most fluid parts of the team and Saka’s connection with White and Odegaard meant that their movement allowed him to move freely and into space.

Saka’s hamstring problem last season was the first major injury of his career.

And, in a sign of his robustness, it came on his 250th appearance for Arsenal, and made him the the youngest Englishman to reach that milestone for the Gunners.

That injury kept him out for 101 days, but he scored on his return against Fulham before scoring away against Real Madrid as Arsenal reached the last four of the Champions League, before going out against Paris St-Germain.

This season he picked up a hamstring injury which kept him out for four weeks early on in the campaign. He then pulled out of the warm-up away at Leeds in January with a hip injury and missed three games.

This season, although low on numbers for Saka, could be one of the most important of his career as he looks to play a vital part in Arsenal winning major trophies.

For the past six seasons Saka has consistently been among the highest Arsenal players for minutes played too.

This season he has played 2,869 minutes in all competitions, which is more than the 2,619 he played last season.

With a World Cup coming up, Tuchel is mindful of protecting his stars, saying “some of these guys have already played more minutes than the whole of last season and there is still a lot of football to play” when announcing his latest squad.

Saka could play up to 15 more games this season for Arsenal if they reach the finals of the FA Cup and Champions League, which would take his tally to 57 if he plays in all of them.

Moses Itauma has been lauded as the future of the division, which he might very well be. But right now, and where he is at in his career, he is not ready to take on the world’s best heavyweights.

And any talk of him fighting Oleksandr Usyk or Fabio Wardley for a world title is just a ridiculous conversation.

I’ve seen so many instances where young prospects, especially heavyweights, have been called the “second coming of X” – you can fill in the gap – and then they fall short.

Because if you actually look at it in the cold light of day, what is there in Itauma’s 13 wins that could lead anybody to think that as of today, he could fight any of the top guys?

In the future, he might knock them all out.

The good thing is the kid doesn’t buy into all of it. He just gets on with business. He doesn’t buy into the hype and he knows how good he is.

Itauma’s record is perfectly acceptable for a guy who’s had 13 fights and is only 21 years of age.

On Saturday, he has a real test against Jermaine Franklin – a perfect piece of matchmaking.

Boxing loves a nice cliche. Every single Mexican fighter was supposedly one of 17 brothers and had been a shoeshine boy since he was six.

Then there’s the female fighter who had to pretend to be a boy because she wasn’t allowed to fight as a girl – Caroline Dubois seems to have done that, and Katie Taylor most definitely did.

With Itauma, the stories are about the established pros he’d sparred as a teenager.

I like the idea that he was still a schoolboy wearing his shorts and his sandals, although I think that’s ripping the proverbial out of it.

But testimony from different gyms and fighters suggests that yes, he did show up after school to spar with guys while he was still wearing his uniform.

I personally first became aware of Itauma when he was about 16.

He was on his way to winning junior and youth titles as an unbeaten amateur, still wearing a headguard. There were rumours circulating about this kid.

The way Itauma has been pushed, promoted and sold as a professional is not like any other heavyweight. And it has brought him a lot of attention.

There was all that talk of him beating Mike Tyson’s record of becoming the youngest ever heavyweight world champion, which has since passed.

I don’t think the Mike Tyson comparisons hurt Itauma in any way, because they weren’t being made by him.

He wasn’t walking around with a T-shirt saying “I’m going to beat Mike Tyson’s record”.

And when it became quite clear – maybe six months or eight months or a year before – that it wasn’t going to happen, he told me in an interview we did on BBC Radio 5 Live that he was relieved.

Less than two years ago, Itauma went the six-round distance with the unknown Kostiantyn Dovbyshchenko (9-12-1) and Kevin Nicolas Espindola (7-7). Those were not great performances.

Since then, he’s been a lot sharper with his finishing. He looks far more dangerous when he’s fighting men.

The improvements we want to see now are the ones we don’t know about yet.

We don’t know what happens if he’s under pressure. We don’t know what happens when a guy doesn’t fall over the first time he clips them.

And we don’t know what happens in round six or seven – or if he’s cut, or if he gets hurt and stunned.

In his last fight, he took on an experienced Dillian Whyte and did brilliant business with him. Now he has the perfect opponent in Franklin.

Franklin, at 32, is still relatively young in boxing years. His only two defeats have been quality losses on points – one to a much better Whyte than the man Itauma faced, and the other to Anthony Joshua.

In Franklin’s last fight he stopped the previously unbeaten Ivan Dychko (15-0). So if Itauma beats him on points, that would be phenomenal.

But if Itauma stops him, that would be one of the finest wins of his career so far – and exactly what he needs.

Then another big test like that – another big, old, solid guy. Someone like Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller who won’t fold in a round or two.

And then we can have another conversation about whether or not he’s ready for the likes of Wardley.