It started with a sicknote and ended in arguably the biggest fairytale story ever penned by a Scottish player. Paul Lambert, a good solid professional plying his trade at Motherwell, taking a punt on a trial in Germany that was to end with him marking Zinedine Zidane out of the Champions League final a year later.
The midfielder would go on to captain Scotland and Celtic but Lambert admits that a decision to pull the wool over Fir Park boss Alex McLeish’s eyes in the summer of 1996 changed everything.
Speaking on the Off The Record podcast, Lambert said: “Motherwell were going to Northampton, pre-season, and Rab McKinnon had gone to Twente Enschede.
I kept in touch with him and asked how the move had come around and he told me a Dutch agent, Ton van Dalen, had made it happen and offered to put me in touch with him. “Ton phoned me just as Motherwell were going to Northampton, so I was thinking, ‘how am I going to get out of that trip?’ I shouldn’t have done it, but I did it - I pulled a sickie. “Ton told me to jump on a plane and he’d meet me in Enschede.