Rangers mind blowing march towards history has been a credit to not just themselves but the country – Keith Jackson

It’s almost certainly not supposed to feel like this.

Scottish football has spent so many decades kicking around in the doldrums that it’s difficult to remember a time when it had so much reason to feel good about itself.

It may have been acceptable in the 80s, back when Aberdeen were beating Real Madrid and you weren’t allowed to stage a World Cup without sending an official invite by airmail to the residence of Kenny Dalglish.

But so many generations have come and gone since then that gradually, over the years, our game has become conditioned into booting lumps out of itself.

This self loathing developed into an all consuming inferiority complex as well as a source of endless national shame. Put it this way, you didn’t need to watch Trainspotting to know how it felt to be Scottish.

But it really does feel different now, as if some mysterious switch has been flicked and the gloom has been pierced by a shaft of golden light.

Yes, Scottish football may be blinking furiously as its eyes attempt to adjust to the glare but let’s be in no doubt here, our game hasn’t felt so alive or so vibrant since it began disappearing down a rabbit hole before the end of the last millennium.

Come to think of it, now might be the perfect time to send a search party into the bowels of Hampden to unchain Henry McLeish and release him from Rinus Michel’s old think tank which was meant to bring all this suffering and misery to an end.

It’s over lads. Thanks for nothing. Don’t bang your heads on the way out.

Because on Wednesday night Rangers will attempt to become the first Scottish side to lift European silverware since Alex Ferguson’s miracle men walked on water during the great flood of Gothenburg back in 1983.

And, without wishing to