How ‘the best player in the world’ was shackled by a boy from Glasgow

They were the reigning back-to-back Bundesliga champions, but heading into the 1997 Champions League final, the odds were stacked firmly against Borussia Dortmund.

Ottmar Hitzfeld’s side had battled a swath of injuries and indifferent form all season; Matthias Sammer, Paulo Sousa, Karl-Heinz Riedle and Steffen Freund had all missed large chunks of the season and BVB would lose their domestic title to Bayern Munich, finishing third, eight points adrift of their Bavarian rivals.

And while they enjoyed a home advantage of sorts in the European showpiece – with the final played at Munich’s Olympiastadion – they were up against Juventus, the reigning Champions League winners and the most feared side on the continent.

But Dortmund didn’t fear Juventus; or anyone else, for that matter. Underdogs to the outside world, BVB backed themselves.

“That was the great thing about playing for Dortmund at that time – the belief in the guys they had,” says Paul Lambert, the former Scotland international who anchored Dortmund’s midfield against Marcello Lippi’s Serie A superstars. “They were brilliant footballers, really strong and had a great attitude to the game.

“The expectancy was that we wanted to win it. Everybody knew that Juventus were strong. They were probably the team in Europe in the 90s with the players they had. But it was a one-off game. I always thought that if anyone was going to beat Borussia Dortmund in that era, they had to be a hell of a side themselves.”

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Lambert had signed for Dortmund the previous summer, joining as a free agent after his contract with Motherwell had expired. From humble beginnings in Scottish football, he was suddenly rubbing shoulders with several stars of Germany’s 1996 European Championship-winning side and, in Sammer, a Ballon d’Or winner. He was struck quickly by the quality of his new team-mates and manager.

“They trained the way they played,” he says. “They were world-class players. They never held back or took it easy. They were right on it. It was a great habit to learn. That’s why they were great players.

“I had a great time under [Hitzfeld]. He taught me so much about the discipline of the game. He was a great manager; really clever, really calm. He dealt with big, big stars. He was just a top guy. Really calm on the training pitch and on the sideline.”

Lambert’s move to Germany was, for the time, an exotic one. He took advantage of the recently ratified Bosman rule to test himself in a new environment, outside of his comfort zone. But it was a move that very nearly didn’t happen. Out of contract and with limited options, he had to audition for his next role.

“I was at PSV Eindhoven first,” he says. “I played two trial games for them, but Dick Advocaat played me as a winger. I was never a winger. I did OK, but Dick wanted someone with speed and one-v-one ability. I was more of a central midfielder. Then I made the journey to Dortmund and played four trial games there.”

His quality proved, Lambert found himself as the beating midfield heart of a European contender. Dortmund qualified for the Champions League quarter-finals by finishing runners-up to Atletico Madrid on goal difference in the group phase. After breezing through a favourable last-eight tie with Auxerre, they faced Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United for a place in the final.

“The Germans had great belief,” he says. “They never put too much focus on who they were playing in the semi-final. It was just another game for them. That’s the way I viewed it myself. We had so many injuries in the first leg. If you look at the team, there were a lot of lads who weren’t really regulars. We knew if we scored at Old Trafford, United were never going to score three against us.”

They beat United 1-0 in each leg, packing Eric Cantona off to a shock retirement that summer. But with one mercurial French playmaker banished, another laid in wait in the final. It would be Lambert’s personal responsibility to keep Zinedine Zidane quiet.

“I knew my role and I was used to the role,” he says. “I’d played against the likes of Stefan Effenberg, Mehmet Scholl, Thomas Hassler, [Krasimir] Balakov, Dariusz Wosz at Bochum. I’d played against some brilliant No.10s. Zidane was another one that was going to come up in that mould. He was probably the best player in the world at the time, but I knew the job I had to do on the night.

“Ottmar showed me in the analysis how he was two-footed and could go either way. The danger was when we were attacking, because Zidane could drift. As soon as he drifts off you, you’re in trouble. So the secret for me was never to ball-watch. If you ball-watch, you’re in trouble. If he gets you on a one-v-one, you don’t want to dive in and go to ground easy because he can skin you both ways. Ottmar told me exactly what it was going to be like.”

Not only did Lambert successfully shackle Zidane; he also beat the future World Cup winner as a creator, providing the assist for the game’s opening goal in the 29th minute – another moment foreseen and plotted by Hitzveld.

“He told me about how we ended up scoring the first goal,” Lambert says. “He said, ‘If you get the ball, Paul, look for the diagonal.’ He thought they were weaker at the back post. And if you look at the first goal, that’s exactly how it played out. I hit the diagonal. It fell to Karl-Heinz Riedle and he did the rest. Ottmar was the best.”

Riedle, who would join Liverpool that summer, added a second five minutes later, a powerful header from an Andreas Moller corner. Juventus hit back through Alessandro Del Piero in the second half. But then, in the 70th minute, substitute Lars Ricken streaked clear and lobbed goalkeeper Angelo Peruzzi from 25 yards. That, Lambert attests, is when Dortmund knew they were European champions.

“When Lars scored the goal, that was it,” he says. “When you saw their faces when they took the kick-off, it put the nail in the coffin. They were never going to get back. That was the moment. It was Lars’’ first touch of the ball. It was a wonder-goal. One of the great Champions League goals of the era. That was when I knew it was over.”

And with that odds-defying victory, Lambert became the first British player to lift the European Cup with a foreign club.

“I never realised that was the history of it,” he says. “I’m from a small country in a small part of the world in Glasgow. Not many Scottish guys have done it. Everybody thinks you go there and you get a bit of luck. Yes, I had a bit of luck, but you’ve also got to have ability. There wouldn’t be too many people who could go over to Germany and do it at that time. My mindset was very strong. It meant a lot, coming from Glasgow and winning the biggest and best trophy you could win as a footballer.”

Within five months of Dortmund’s Champions League triumph, though, Lambert was back in Scotland. He’d been happy in Germany, but his young son had fallen ill and so he and his wife decided to return home, signing for Celtic. Back in Glasgow, he found himself fighting an even bigger underdog battle than he’d faced with Dortmund.

“After the Champions League final, teams were trying to sign me, but I was really happy with Borussia Dortmund,” Lambert remembers. “I didn’t want to move. We started the season and everything was going great. Teams kept trying to get me and I kept saying no because I loved the club and I loved the city.

“But then my son took not too well. I had to speak to the club to ask to go back to Scotland. At first they were really reluctant and I understood it. But then we came back. And it was a really big season for Celtic, trying to stop Rangers winning 10 titles in a row.”

In winning nine successive top-flight titles, Rangers had already equalled the tally of the Lisbon Lions, Jock Stein’s great Celtic side of the 1960s who’d become the first British club to win the European Cup. Despite losing twice to their Old Firm rivals in the final weeks of the season – once in the league at Ibrox and then in a Scottish Cup semi-final at Parkhead – Celtic pipped their bitter foes to the title by two points, successfully defending the legacy of the Lions and, Lambert believes, laying the foundations for future success.

“For two months I was nowhere near the level I should have been at,” he recalls of his switch to Celtic. “But time heals. My son started to get better. Then I started to perform.

“Stopping the 10 in a row gave the football club the catalyst to win trophies. The Rangers team at that time was the strongest team I played against. They had a really good side. The Celtic lads were bang at it every week. The manager was great as well. That title was the hardest one that I won.

“The achievement was so important for the history of the club, protecting the nine in a row the Lisbon Lions and Jock Stein had won. It was the biggest domestic title I ever won. It was a proper ding-dong battle with Rangers and we knew the magnitude of it. The burden weighing on us was huge. The Lisbon Lions and Jock Stein’s era had to be protected.”

From making history to preventing it, it’s hard to imagine one player powering such varying and iconic success stories in back-to-back seasons as Lambert’s late-90s fairytale.