Jukey bagged three and they named Final after someone else .. that guy was Laudrup .. he beats Larsson as our top foreign import

got a mention the following day in the papers! He can laugh about it as well because more than anything, all the boys who played with him were appreciative of just how good a team-mate he was.

“That day he was unplayable, set up Jukey’s three, scored two himself. We were lucky to have him.”

Smith’s first experience of a foreign influx to Scotland came when Jerry Kerr signed him for Dundee United as a teenager in 1966.

And he insists in the five decades which followed, the import culture changed Scottish football for the better – mostly.

“Guys like Hal Stewart at Morton and Jerry Kerr broke the mould in the 60s when they started signing Scandinavians,” he said. “Orjan Persson had just left Dundee United for Rangers when I made my debut but guys like Finn Dossing, Finn Seemann and Mogens Berg were still there.

“First and foremost, these guys were good players who’d make a difference to teams like Dundee United and Morton. Same with Roald Jensen at Hearts.

“They were good footballers and they changed people’s perceptions of foreign players in Scotland.

“We’ve gone through different phases though. After that first wave we then saw clubs like Dundee United and Aberdeen be successful with home-reared players, they unearthed an entire generation of really good Scottish guys and they did well at home against the Old Firm and in Europe.

“Then we had the influx of English players under Graeme Souness at Rangers.

“All of a sudden it became fashionable again to seek something different for teams to to become one. It was his biggest gest quality, his stature. The start off the next season under Dick Advocaat aat was when he really took over the leadership of the team.

“I thought it might be a bit awkward for Lorenzo at first to put his stamp on things but he handled led it brilliantly. He was exceptional nal for Rangers, played 250 games, won nine trophies and everyone speaks ks fondly of him.

“He’s welcomed back with open en arms, which is always telling.”

Smith is a massive bel iever in the positives created by a multi- national , multi-cultural Scottish game.

But he admits there were negatives as quality was overtaken by quantity.

He said: “There are some brilliant players on that list, they all brought something to the Scottish game.

“But the problem is you won’t always get the best if it’s quantity rather than quality and you end up with players not at the level we had before.

“Everyone of the guys we’ve been speaking about brought something to the Scottish game.

“And Scottish kids were motivated to tryry to get to the level of a Larsson or a Laudrup, rup, which is a brilliant thing.

“But Bosman and the freedom of movement ment in Europe normalised players crossing ing borders at every level. There was a period iod where bringing in foreign players was an easy asy option – too easy an option sometimes – and the international team suffered.

“So it has been good for our game overall rall but at times it took over and we lost sightt of the necessity to breed our own players.

“That’s the down side but when you think nk about the joy that so many of these guys ys have brought to so many people, it has as definitely been more up than down.”