When he leaves Juventus, Massimiliano Allegri will leave Italy. “Certainly I will go abroad,” the Juventus coach says. He even breaks into English to emphasise his point: “In Italy, finished”.

Allegri is clearly a man with a plan. He believes that he has “five or six years” left in club football before becoming a national team coach, but before then there is one extremely significant piece of business to complete at Juve: winning the Champions League.

We meet outside the entrance to the first-team complex at the club's sprawling training ground in Vinovo, south of Turin - all gleaming glass and chrome - and pass Gianluigi Buffon and Andrea Barzagli, deep in conversation, on our way to another spotless meeting room.

Over the next hour Allegri explains how he works, how he is “a natural and not a built coach” – and what that means - and how playing in the Champions League is comparable to an evening at La Scala.

The latest grand opera production opens this week with Juventus facing Real Madrid in the last eight. It will be pure theatre.