Guglielmo Vicario is a passionate man and when the Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper commits to something he does so whole-heartedly.
The 28-year-old was brought out before the group of assembled media inside the Aspmyra Stadion in Bodo on Wednesday night as the player to represent Spurs ahead of their enormous Europa League semi-final second leg. The earlier press conferences for the home team had resulted in a packed room, for Tottenham there was less interest beyond the travelling English journalists and a handful of Norwegian reporters.
During the wait for Spurs to arrive, someone had ridden through the press conference room on a bicycle and out another door. "That's our fitness coach," said one member of the club staff with a smile and a shake of the head.
When Vicario emerged after Tottenham's slightly delayed flight into the little town's airport, it was all about the business at hand. The Italy international is a focused man and with excellent English he always speaks passionately and honestly about the team he has fallen in love with since arriving from Empoli almost two years ago.
The goalkeeper is still fully behind the Ange Postecoglou way, no doubt feeling he owes some debt for the Australian who championed his move from Serie A while seeing a kindred spirit in their battles up and down football's ladder.
"We've always backed him, since two years ago when he started his job, and we are really committed to what we have to do," said Vicario on Wednesday. "We know exactly which is our way of football and we always believed in what Ange gave us during this period. Nothing's changed, to be fair, of course, we went through two rounds, hopefully we're going to do it again tomorrow."
The Italian knows what he wants and while he was careful with his words at times during his press conference, he is an unfiltered force of nature on the football pitch.
One moment he will be berating his Spurs team-mates for losing focus and concentration and the next grabbing them and shaking them in celebration at something they did that prevented a goal. He makes a point of celebrating every defensive action like a goal for his team.
Some might mistake his actions for being over the top or even aggressive at times as he grabs shirts, faces and arms and anything he can reach, but it's all done from a place of passion and investment in both the person and the team.
This is the man after all who put in a star display in the 4-0 win at Manchester City earlier in the season, despite having fractured his foot in the first half of the encounter at the Etihad Stadium.
Vicario wants everyone to feel that unity and it hasn't always worked with the fans, occasionally finding himself out of sync with the tired, travelling Tottenham faithful after a painful defeat but they should know where that passion comes from.
If you want to see where Vicario gets his ability to fully invest in something, you need only look to his parents Monica and Michele. The duo have become immensely popular among Spurs fans as they can be found everywhere their son goes and they have thrown themselves into life as supporters of the club.
The Italian couple are warm and open and can often be seen among the throng of fans both home and away, and on these European trips, chatting away while wearing their Tottenham scarves. To call them Spurs celebrities in their own right might be accurate but also do them a disservice as they've integrated so well into Tottenham life that they're now a part of the fanbase, loudly cheering the team on at every game and many supporters now call them friends.
The duo appeared in an insightful documentary this season about Vicario's battle to return from that fractured foot and Monica recently took part in a Q&A event at the club with her son to mark the one-year anniversary of Women of the Lane, Spurs' official supporters’ association for women. Like Guglielmo, Monica's English was and is excellent.
So when you see Vicario commit wholeheartedly to Tottenham, you know where he gets it from and he is well aware this season has been tough. When football.london asked him if he and Cristian Romero will have to step up as leaders on Thursday night in the absence of the injured Son Heung-min and James Maddison, he nodded with a rueful smile.
"It's the kind of thing that we've always to deal with, to be fair. We will not have Sonny and Madders for tomorrow. So yeah, it's on us but it's on everyone," he said. "The importance of the entire squad tomorrow will be crucial and we will need the contribution from everyone who's going to start and who's going to come in and from the guys on the bench. I think the Spurs family will play a crucial role in the game tomorrow."
Son is on his way back and just missed out on this match. The Spurs skipper could play some part against Crystal Palace in the Premier League on Sunday and the South Korean will hope that he will still have a European final to aim for after that.
For Maddison that is out of the question. The midfielder's knee injury will not require surgery but the ligament damage will keep him out for up to 12 weeks, which means a potential return just in time for the new season. Tottenham had initially feared worse, so while the England international will now spend the summer recovering he should at least be back in time for the new campaign.
In the remainder of his press conference Vicario was not going to be drawn into a battle of words with Bodo player Frederik Sjovold after the midfielder had said Tottenham's pressing in the first leg was bad, with the goalkeeper simply responding: "We're going to let our football speak tomorrow on the pitch."
An even shorter response came to a question about his own shakier displays in the Premier League games against Wolves and Nottingham Forest in recent weeks behind a constantly-changing defence. He was asked about those games and whether he's managed to keep his confidence up.
"Yeah. I'm full of confidence. Yes," he said before flashing a polite smile beneath eyes that looked to be saying something else.
When the Tottenham players went out to train inside Bodo's stadium after the press conferences, they spent a lot of time looking at the artificial surface that has become a big talking point, before taking a gentle jog around it to get used to the way it moved under their feet.
Normally in the 15 minutes of training open to the media before a European game, you get to see various ball work being undertaken at least before the reporters are ushered away. However, Spurs did not even get to that stage within the first 15 minutes as they concentrated simply during that time on loosening the players up and adjusting them to the new surface, fearful no doubt of the potential hamstring and knee problems it can bring to a squad that has long grown tired of new injuries.
For Vicario, it will be a case of learning quickly how the ball bounces so he can react to the shots that come towards him during Thursday night's clash.
"I don't have a lot of experience [of such surfaces] to be fair. I've played, I think the last time five years ago on an artificial pitch but I cannot change this, so it's just how quickly you adapt," he admitted. "As fast as you adapt, the easier it will be. So it's just the kind of mindset too. We knew before coming here that the surface would be artificial so we cannot change the condition of the pitch just for tomorrow night."
Postecoglou chose not to have the players train on a different artificial surface ahead of the game, saying Spurs would not have been able to recreate the feel of the pitch in Bodo or the dimensions so it would have been of little use. If things go badly in Norway, it is likely to be that decision that will be scrutinised more than any. If Tottenham progress then it will be forgotten about entirely.
Postecoglou came out after Vicario for his press conference and was in a jovial mood. It was a long way removed from the club's last European semi-final second leg press conference, a packed affair in Amsterdam when a frustrated Mauricio Pochettino found himself blurting out that he might leave Tottenham if they won the Champions League, a moment that seemed reactionary and did him no favours with some of the fanbase.
At this more low-key press conference, Postecoglou looked like a man who wasn't feeling any pressure despite the scale of the match to come in the Norwegian town.
The 59-year-old seemed to have great fun when discussing Arsene Wenger's views that Tottenham and Manchester United do not deserve to play in the Champions League if they were to win the Europa League.
"Well, I mean that's a debate that's been raging for years, like at least the last eight days. I've never heard that before, so.. I've said it before, mate, Spurs does crazy things to people. It does, it does," he said with a playful grin. "You put that club into any sentence or any issue, and invariably they all come out and try and diminish as much as they can.
"Why wasn't there an issue before and it's an issue now? What's the difference? I don't understand what the difference is. Last year, fifth didn't get you into the Champions League, this year it does. What does that mean? There are competition rules and the rules say that the winner goes into [the Champions League] and it's not the first year, and there isn't an asterisk against it that you have to do something else as well. But it's Spurs, mate, they love it. They love it. Oh, they love it, you love it, don't you?"
When it was put to him that even former Arsenal managers love it, he replied: "Well, you know, I don't want to go down that road because I've got a great respect for Arsene. He's one of the legends of the game, but it does crazy things to people, mate, I love it. I love it, bring it on. It's going to upset people, so that makes me happy."
So would finally winning a trophy, the first European one for the club in four decades, go some way to changing that narrative around the north London club?
"I don't know if it will change it, but certainly some of it becomes redundant for sure because a big part and a lot of the narrative around the club is we haven't won for a very long time," said Postecoglou. "Anything. I think it is 17 years for a trophy, 41 for a European trophy, so that is part of it.
"Some of it will still exist beyond that, but as I said, from my perspective how do you create a winning culture? It all starts with winning. I think the more experiences you have of winning, if you can land a trophy along the way, it certainly gives belief within the whole club that it is capable and possible of doing. We've still got a big game tomorrow to even get through to get to a final before we can start talking about that."
Spurs must be fully focused on not freezing just above the Arctic Circle in Bodo on Thursday night, even if the home fans got up to the usual European big game tricks of letting off fireworks outside the team's hotel at 2.30am, something that always has less impact when it's a night match the following day.
Tottenham need to have both eyes on this game because they have taken leads abroad before and failed, with the nightmare in Zagreb still fresh and haunting for those both inside the club and among the fanbase. Conversely, this latest European adventure comes exactly six years to the day since that remarkable night in Amsterdam and once again Spurs will be wearing a green kit for the game.
It's time for Vicario, Postecoglou and Tottenham to put a season of pain behind them and focus on making sure it's all been in the pursuit of something special.
