The Light Blues will be searching for a positive result as they look to make it all to play for in the final group stage game against Ajax in Glasgow next month.
Speaking exclusively to RangersTV on the eve of the match, McCallum says his young side – consisting of a range of age groups - are united in their aim of producing a positive outcome:
“We’re looking forward to it. The feeling within the group is quite strong right now and that includes the lads from the 2003 age group all the way up to 2007. We’re all coming together to make sure we get a strong performance tomorrow.
“There has been a number of lads in the 2005-2006 age group that have been part of the group for the whole campaign. We’ve also got Jack Wylie and Alfie Halliwell with us this week from the 2007 group.
“It’s a great experience for them and opportunities have opened up to be part of the group this week so hopefully they’ll take a lot from it. We want to be part of a group that performs and ultimately gets three points to set ourselves up for the sixth game back in Glasgow.”
Rangers ran out 3-2 winners in the reverse fixture against Napoli at Firhill last month, and McCallum insists that his players should take confidence from their performance levels that afternoon.
He continued: “It was a strong a performance in all aspects, especially in the first half. We carried a lot of attacking threat and we were really aggressive in the way that we pressed and went after them, we created chances off the back of that.
“We were perhaps not as aggressive as we would have liked in the second half and we were caught a couple of times as a result of that which shows that in these level of games, if you do come off it a little bit, you can be punished. What we have to look at is the levels that we hit that day, and there are parts of other games that we’ve played where we feel we’re getting closer but it perhaps hasn’t lasted as long as we’d like within the game.
Napoli picked up their first points of Group A in a 1-1 draw at home to Ajax last week, and McCallum believes the result underlines the challenge that the Italian side will pose in their own backyard.
He added: “They are a team that perform better at home. If you look at their first game against Liverpool, they ran them close and narrowly lost 2-1. They then played against Ajax here last week. We know they’re a team that have gotten better performances at home.
“We got a good result and performance against them back home and, while we can use that and recognise that we did very well, we also have to respect that it’s a different venue and it’s on AstroTurf. It’s a venue that they use quite frequently in their league games so it’s something that they’ll be very familiar with.
“We need to look at where we believe we have opportunities to go and perform well and cause them problems, but recognise that there are threats that perhaps didn’t come along in the game in Glasgow.
“We know how important this game is tomorrow, and we know what reward potentially comes on the back of it. It’s an important game, and we do have to win it to give ourselves any chance of progressing in the tournament – that has to be our objective. We believe that if we hit our levels, and get close to the levels we hit in the last game against them but for a longer period of time, then we can [win].”
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