John Greig, whose goal 42 years ago gave Scotland their only ever win over Italy, says that to repeat the feat big-name reputations must be ignored.
"I've never seen a team that doesn't panic a bit when you put them under pressure, so Scotland can't show Italy too much respect," Greig said.
"The Scottish players must go and do what they're good at.
"Reputations are great, but you haven't won a game until the final whistle goes and you've scored the most goals."
The Rangers and Scotland legend scored the only goal of the game with two minutes to go as the Scots surprised Italy in front of 109,000 fans in a World Cup qualifier at Hampden in November 1965.
"The Scottish players must show self-belief"
Scotland must defeat Italy in Saturday's crunch qualifier at Hampden to qualify for next year's European Championship finals in Austria & Switzerland.
And Greig, who played more than 800 games for Rangers and collected 44 Scotland caps in an illustrious 17-year playing career, believes that the current Italian side is not a vintage one.
"I don't think the Italian team, at this moment in time, is as good an Italian team as there's been in the past - but that's easy to say!" he said.
He also stressed that Scotland should approach Saturday's encounter like any other game.
"It's just a game of football. It's 11 against 11," said Greig. "It's not as if Italy are going on the park with 15 players or something.
"The Scottish players must show self-belief."
Greig has spent more than 40 years talking about his famous winning goal - in fact, every time Scotland and Italy meet.
But he bemoaned the fact that it was ultimately a meaningless statistic.
Despite Greig's dramatic late goal handing the Scots a surprise win over the Italians, they still failed to qualify for the following year's World Cup in England.
The previous month Scotland had lost 2-1 to Poland and were then eliminated the following month, going down 3-0 to Italy in Naples.
"It was a special goal on the night, but it didn't count for anything," Greig said.
"It gave people that evening a lot of hope and Hampden must have had half a million people in it that night because everyone I've spoken to recently tells me they were at that game.
"We had a lot of good players in the international team then - Denis Law, Billy Bremner, Jimmy Baxter, world class players - but I still never played in a European Championship or World Cup finals.
"I think among the players we felt, if we could get to the finals in England, it would be like playing at home.
"We might've done something in the World Cup in England, but it wasn't to be," Greig added wistfully.
Barry Ferguson, James McFadden, Scott Brown and co will be determined to trump their illustrious predecessors in at least one respect in Saturday's showdown - by taking their place in the finals of a major tournament.
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