At whatever stage Ronaldo comes on to the field on Wednesday night for Inter at the San Siro against Manchester United - and he's believed not to have more than an hour in those ever vulnerable legs - Jaap Stam is unlikely to tremble.
Although the Dutch centre-back had a mixed World Cup in France last summer, when he was guilty of a series of blunders that cost two goals, a penalty and cast serious doubt on the size of the enormous transfer fee paid for him by United to PSV Eindhoven, when it came to the crunch against Brazil, Stam stood up manfully to Ronaldo.
Holland deserved better than they got in the semi-final and Stam unquestionably had the better of Ronaldo. The Brazilian's half-hour return to Inter's attack last Wednesday in Parma, however, has given his team new heart and hope, but, no matter what he says, he cannot play for 90 minutes against United. To say he is talismanic is to say no more than the half of it. From Mircea Lucescu, the team's temporary Romanian manager, to the Milanese sports writers and to the Inter fans, the refrain is the same: Inter with Ronaldo are an altogether better team.
His return, however, presents his club - so unsuccessful in recent weeks and so disappointed by defeat at Old Trafford - with an odd and unexpected problem: an embarrassment of riches up front.
"If they need a goal late in the game on Wednesday," joked a Milanese football journalist, "they could put five strikers on." For, indeed, strikers are there in spades: Ronaldo, Roberto Baggio, Francesco Moriero, Ivan Zamorano and Nicola Ventola.
In Parma, where they lost their Italian Cup quarter-final return 2-1, having gone down 2-0 at home in the first leg, Inter brought back Moriero, long injured, and at one stage deployed three men up front.
When Ronaldo came on, the 20-year-old Ventola went off but, given the threat he posed at Old Trafford, the three occasions in which he nearly scored - twice thwarted by Peter Schmeichel and once on the line by Henning Berg - he is certain to be used at one stage or another.
There are critics in Milan who would prefer him to Zamorano, the Chilean striker who, although largely opaque in Manchester, did test Schmeichel with one of his typically powerful headers. The reason for this express preference is that while Zamorano these days so seldom scores - despite his prowess both in last May's Uefa Cup final in Paris and in the subsequent World Cup - Ventola scores more often.
Tall and strongly built, Ventola is described as a classical centre-forward, quick, alert, and eager to go for goal whatever the odds, and remaining the focus of attack, rather than dropping back to receive the ball. This was clear to see earlier in the season - before he was badly injured - on his League debut away to Cagliari last September.
Inter were two goals down, then on came Ventola who, with a couple of magnificent bursts from the left, scored twice. In doing so, he saved Gigi Simoni, the manager at the time, whose job had been hanging by a thread.
Ventola is what they would call in Italy un uomo serio, a dedicated young man who has been studying jurisprudence at Bari University. He was born near Bari and is strongly attached to his region. Indeed, when Milan came in and bought him last season for a gigantic sum, he was not sure that he would not prefer to stay with Bari for a season. At least there, he reflected, he could be sure of playing 34 league games a season, injury permitting.
Last season, in fact, was a cruel anticlimax for him. Having helped Bari to promotion to Serie A with 10 goals in 29 Serie B games during the previous season, a shocking injury ruled him out for all but eight Serie A games and a couple of goals in season 1997-98.
Playing in November 1997 against Empoli, he suffered fearful damage to his right knee. The operation that followed was successful, but after his dazzling start with Inter this season Ventola badly damaged the same knee playing against Sampdoria, almost exactly a year after his initial injury.
Some thought he had been brought back too soon this year and, indeed, he looked somewhat rusty in his first games. Untypically, he is the most modest of young men. He was even reluctant to come off the bench as a substitute against Lazio in Rome last month. But since then he has made quick progress and United's puzzled defence would doubtless testify that he is again a substantial danger.
Ventola's family, by contrast with that of most Italian professional footballers - Gianluca Vialli is another exception - is emphatically middle-class and very close. His lawyer father has a responsible job in local government, while his mother teaches history and philosophy.
Back in June 1997, when Milan in particular were buzzing around young Ventola, his father declared: "Nicola will always have me at his side, even if he has to have an agent. Like that, the sharks which cruise around the world of football will not be able to do him any damage."
When he joined Inter from Bari at the end of October, his mother, Nuccia Scarola, remarked: "At the beginning, with all those important names like Baggio and Ronaldo, I was perplexed, I was afraid that they would squash him like a flea" She was quite wrong.
In Bari, Ventola was cherished as well as admired. He was known as the kid who slept on the team coach when Bari played away, who watched Roma's games on television and wept when Bari lost a game.
When, last May, he went north to Milan for his medical, he refused to let the attendant photographers take pictures of him with an Inter jersey. He still wasn't sure, he said, whether he wanted to leave Bari.
Some weeks ago, when Dino Zoff, Italy's manager, chose him for the Azzurri squad for an international, he found himself in Cremona with an under-21 team and, far from being overjoyed, was distressed by the fact that he would have to leave his young teammates.
Not only is he large, incisive, penetrative and good in the air, but he also has enviable technique. He could, indeed, prove a greater threat to Stam and company than Ronaldo, who, after so long a hiatus, could scarcely be expected to be fully match-fit.
Ronaldo's presence, however, may do much to restore the Inter team's shaken morale. Relations with the hapless Lucescu are still hardly ideal. How could they be, when he and everybody else know that he is no more than a bird of passage? He is destined to move on, or back to Bucharest, when Marcello Lippi takes over for pre-season training in the summer.
The Taribo West situation - a rebel without a cause, you might say - has been especially unfortunate. At Old Trafford, West's power in the air might have been enough to stop Dwight Yorke heading those two rather easy goals. Alternatively, had West been playing at left-back rather than the uneasy Aron Winter, it is unlikely David Beckham would have had the time and space to send Yorke those two pinpoint right-wing crosses.
United start as favourites on Wednesday, but Ronaldo, Baggio and Ventola are formidable foes.
