He is the highest earner in European football on 67,000 quid a week basic. He is his country's idol, a player with quite unfair gifts, and already in Euro 2000, he has scored one of the goals of the tournament. Yet Alessandro Del Piero is likely to have to sit on the bench tomorrow and wait his turn to parade his genius, like a sleek Ferrari only ever taken out of the garage for exhibitions.

Most of Italy wants to see him back on the road, purring along for 90 minutes but, for the quarter-final against Romania in Brussels, coach Dino Zoff is tipped to keep him back again as the ultimate supersub. Fair enough perhaps, considering the Azzurri are doing very nicely thank you, with three wins from three using their more prosaic if efficient assets.

Yet Zoff can hardly be deaf to the calls back home that if his team are to get to Rotterdam next Sunday, they will need the extra ingredient of the surprise and the sublime which only Del Piero can provide. 'Dear Zoff, find a place for this 12th man who, with a touch of quality and imagination, can propel Italy towards the final,' begged Gazzetta dello Sport after his exquisite strike against Sweden in Eindhoven on Monday.

That night, Italy had watched with delight the continuing renaissance of the man who had seemed to promise them the world a few years ago before knee ligament damage sidelined him for nine months, and then appeared to deflate his confidence and effectiveness on his return.

Italy had already qualified so Zoff could afford to give him a full run-out instead of a brief cameo. What the coach saw, he revealed, left him facing sleepless nights.

For though Del Piero's overall performance was fitful, the contributions he did make were dazzling: a perfectly-weighted corner for Luigi Di Biagio to head home, then a solo run to bewitch two Swedish defenders followed by a precision finish.

In the previous games against Turkey and Belgium, outrageous free-kicks and the occasional killer pass showed a man taking his half-chance to finally live up to the expectations loaded on him as a teenager. So it has become a great Italian debate. Each day at their Belgian training camp, Zoff is asked whether it is time to give Del Piero his chance.

The wily, old coach stalls patiently, but totally, aware that while not so long back his compatriots were dismissing the 25-year-old as overpaid and washed up, now they hung breathlessly on to every minute of his comeback. Because Del Piero is to Italy what Beckham is to England, a one-man soap opera. Everybody has an opinion. The Italian papers were full of Zinedine Zidane suggesting 'I'd choose Del Piero before Filippo Inzaghi because he has the natural strength as well as the will to prove he is No 1', a comment which will doubtless do wonders for harmony at Juventus.

Yet, so far, Zoff has been careful not to sound too carried away by Del Piero's rejuvenation, perhaps not entirely convinced he is back to his best.

'Let's say Del Piero has created a few positive doubts for me and I'm happy about that,' he says, while continuing to go rather more overboard about his Roma striker, Francesco Totti, and Inzaghi. Zoff added: 'Del Piero started okay and now is playing well. Totti started this championship well and now is even better.' For the moment, the front two seem untouchable and the thought of an expansive approach, bringing in Del Piero to work just behind them, looks too rich for a pragmatist like Zoff. Anyway, that attacking midfield role is being filled by Udinese's Stefano Fiore, a Zoff favourite who can work more defensively than Del Piero and has hardly put a foot wrong so far.

While they keep on winning, that's fine, but Italians still yearn for romance. In Del Piero, they sense a real No 10 fit to follow a magician like Roberto Baggio, yet one who, having failed at Euro 96 and France 98 and having heard people mutter he can never be the same player again after his injury, still has a lot of convincing to do.

He evidently feels this himself, having admitted on the eve of the tournament: 'If I don't perform this time, I will feel so very bad. It means so much to me to play well here.' Yet, though his supporting role clearly frustrates him, he has impressed with the way he has handled the disappointment.

He has been the model of patience while shining and scoring for fun in training. 'I have the right sort of rage because I want to play but I also know that the squad needs balance,' he says.

When he scored against Sweden, his first goal from open play for Italy for two years, he barely celebrated. It was as if he had been too chastened by his experiences of the past two years to start believing the hype.

Yet there have been signs here that the moment could be at hand for the most lucratively rewarded footballer at these championships to finally prove why he is worth every lira. Perhaps all he needs is for Zoff to dare to dare.