It was a beautiful, mild and sunny Roman December day out at AS Roma's training ground of Trigoria last Saturday. Standing by the swimming pool outside the clubhouse and looking out over the acres of neatly manicured training pitches, one had that familiar sensation of having arrived at the wrong destination, of having turned up at some sort of exclusive health farm rather than the training ground of the current Serie A league leaders.
Lest the illusion linger long, however, Roma captain Francesco Totti leaned out the clubhouse window to recall us all to footballing reality: "Bastardi, bastardi," he shouted, using a word that needs no translation.
Looking round, the object of Totti's imprecations soon became clear. Out on one of the faraway pitches, a group of newly-arrived players wearing the familiar light-blue of Roma's loathed cross-town rivals, Lazio, had arrived.
These were indeed Lazio players, members of the youth team who had arrived for Saturday afternoon's "Derby della Primavera" against Roma.
For a "romanista" like Totti, it requires only the sight of a light-blue shirt to set him off. His jocular (up to a point) welcome for the young Lazio players served to remind them that they had come to visit "enemy" territory.
His words, too, served to remind us that, next Sunday night, Roma and Lazio meet in the real thing itself at the Olympic Stadium.
Some 2,500 fans watched Roma beat Lazio 1-0 in Saturday's youth team derby, but next Sunday night, the Olympic Stadium will be full to its 75,000 capacity for a Serie A Rome derby that this year seems certain to be even more tense and more keenly contested than ever.
A few minutes after Totti's cheerful abuse, Roma coach Fabio Capello joined us at "poolside" to explain just what next Sunday night's game means: "In the past, this used to be a game in which the sides were playing just to decide who was the best team in the city.
"This year, we're playing for the title, even if the same city tensions, the same jeering, the same leg-pulling goes on between us, this time it is a clash between the reigning Italian champions and the current league leaders."
We might add, too, that "this time" the match could have particular significance for Lazio coach and England manager-elect, Swede Sven Eriksson.
Adding to the tensions of an already tense match is the all-too obvious consideration that Eriksson's impending departure from Lazio might be anticipated by some six months were his side to lose.
"If you look at Roma at the moment, they are very good, they're the best team in Serie A just now and deserve to be out in front . . . It will be very, very difficult for us," Eriksson told The Irish Times last week.
Argentine Gabriel Omar Batistuta took his Serie A seasonal tally to 10 goals from nine games when scoring the opening goal in Roma's 2-1 home win against Udinese on Sunday.
At 31 years of age (he will be 32 next February), Batistuta has thus far defied all those of us who suggested that he had made his long-delayed move from Fiorentina just too late in his career.
It is not that anyone ever doubted the class and talent of Batistuta. In nine seasons with Fiorentina, he had marked himself out as one of the greatest players to grace Italian soccer, a player whose innate goal-scoring talent is matched by a fiercely competitive temperament that team-mates find inspirational and charismatic.
"This is a great player, we wanted him badly, we fought hard to land him and he's proved himself very important and he'll continue to prove himself important, too," said Capello succinctly.
Starting as of next Sunday night?
