The Boy From Linwood Who Followed The Yellow Brick Road To Glory

Trailblazer Lambert quit Steelmen to hone core of steel at Dortmund

They have a yellow wall at Borussia Dortmund. And for one glorious season, a tartan brick was its foundation stone.

At the start of the 1996-97 season, none of the 25,000 who filled that stand at the south end of the Westfalenstadion had ever heard of Paul Lambert.

By the end of it, they were European champions and Lambert was the linchpin around whom superstars Andreas Moller, Karl-Heinz Riedle and Matthais Sammer flourished.

A few months later, he left for Celtic, and as he said his farewells, tears flowed. Not only from Lambert. His departure was greeted with dismay in Dortmund, testimony to the impact made by a player who became the first Scot to win the European Cup with a foreign club.

A teenage Scottish Cup winner with St Mirren in 1987, Lambert moved to Motherwell, where he was considered a decent, if unspectacular attacking-midfielder, good enough to help the Fir Park side into Europe.

And that opened a door that took guts to walk through. Motherwell played well in losing to Borussia Dortmund in the UEFA Cup but wily old fox Ottmar Hitzfeld in the German dugout spotted something in Lambert, whose contract was expiring at the end of the season.