Excuse me while I slaver …

One Gargantuan, de facto giant of the game. One historic giant of the game going through a period of uncertain change. One small, unexalted but hilariously familair club. The Rangers will hope Inter beat everyone else (as well as us), that Artmedia lose to everyone (including us) and that we can pop Porto by even a single goal more than they pop us.

I spent all day telling myself to calm down. You know what I’m talking about. Awaiting the Champions League draw is football foreplay of prematurely ejaculative proportions. (n this case, though, ye have to be IN IT to enjoy the build-up!) But it’s murder trying to work a 9-5 job when all you want to do is talk tae yer colleagues about “who de ye want? Real Madrid? Barcelona?” . We were all seting up contacts - people in the outside world who’d e-mail us (we’re banned from the net at my workplace), people who’d text us. And all the time it was getting increasingly difficult to keep my feet on the ground and, basically, act my age.

Instead of the usual “be a man about it”, I now just say ” be more like Dado!”

What a draw. Well, how could it be anything else, I suppose. When the dullest team ye can get from Pot One is Manchester United, because ye played them two years ago, then it’s pretty certain there was gonnae be at least one salivating tie arranged for The Gers in Monaco this afternoon.

Thing is, we could have landed, for example, Real Madrid, Chelsea and Benfica. Or Arsenal, Juventus and Real Betis!!! That would have been all flash but no hope of going through. Then again we could have got Liverpool, PSV and FC Thun - relatively little glamour (except for the small fact Liverpool are the reigning European champions!) but a supposedly better chance of progressing.

To quote Jimmy Saville, as it happens, we landed a good combination of both scenarios. History AND glamour await. Fuck - when it comes tae the Champions League, they’re both much the same thing.

Glamour in the shape of the Mighty Internazionale of Milano and the Dragons of Oporto - history in that we actually have a fighting chance of becoming Scotland’s first ever qualifiers from a Champions League Group stage…thanks to teh presence of Artmedia Bratislava.

Oh aye - that’s THREE visiting teams we’ll have to applaud onto the Ibrox pitch this season: Motherwell, Porto and Atrmedia Bratislava - all responsible for relatively recent, high-profile shafting of our nearest and dearest cross-town, seperated brethren in the shape of celtic FC!

Artmedia presents a conundrum: They hammered Celtic 5-0 so, even accounting for Strachan’s cluelessness, obviously know what they’re doing at home (Their home against us, by the way, will be the Tehelne Pole stadium - sight of the Third Reich football team’s last ever match: Make of that, what ye will - but the portents haven’t been good so far for Scottish clubs: Slovan Bratislava defeated Jock Stein’s Dunfermline there in the 1969 Cup-Winners’ Cup semi-final). However, they then crumbled 4-0 at Breezeblock Boulevard, so we should be looking to roger them at Ibrox.

But they then went through on penalties against Partizan Belgrade. The Serbians aren’t the club they used to be but will always have geat technical players so it looks as though Artmedia are improving AND they come to our place with prior experience of playing in Glasgow: Hotels, the Airport, folk wearing Burberry with shell-suits - it’ll all be familiar to them.

But this is the team we MUST take maximum points from. We’re not looking to beat them over two legs - we’re looking to beat them home and away. OH, how we laughed when they humped celtic! - oh, how we went a wee bit quiet when we drew them today.

We play the Slovakians in the middle, back-to-back fixtures in the group - this is when we need to guarantee our Uefa Cup place.

Internazionale of Milan. Winners of the European cup in 1964 and 1965. Runners-up in 1967 and 1972. Winners of the uefa Cup in 1991, 94 and 1998 - runners-up in 1997. Adriano - the Brazilian star of this summer’s Confederations Cup is just the latest in a list of famous players stretching from Ronaldo, Baggio, Bergomi and Matthaus through Facchetti and Louis Suarez, all the way to Giuseppe Meazza himself. The man they named the San Siro stadium after… but whose name nobody uses for the stadium.

“EEEEEEENNN-TERRR” did us in the European Cup in the sixties - JUST! They’re lucky Slim Jim was injured - and they were the first foreign club I ever did lay my bare eyes upon: The night big Davie Mitchell scored two against them and we all pretended we could retrieve a 3-0 first leg defeat: Karl Heinz Rummenigge, Liam Brady and Alessandro Altobelli had other things to say about that.

We’ll play Inter behind closed doors at The San Siro - I’ve been there, yer no missing much (Aherm!) - but they could play us on the moon: They should do us home and away.

Inter’s the slaver-tastic name in our section. Love that Black and Blue strip of theirs and love the enigma which hangs over their failure to win Serie A since 1989. They’s minted and they is Glam, glam, GLAM! The truly juicy opponent, however, is PORTO. Winners of the Euopean Cup in 1987, and the Champions League in 2003. They were runners up to Juve in the 1984 Cup-Winners’ Cup but I think they may have won the UEFA Cup quite recently ….

Serial do-ers of Scottish clubs in Europe, they eliminated both ourselves and Abedeen from the Cup-Winners-Cup in the 1983-84 season. Why were two Scottish clubs in the CWC that season? Because Aberdeen, with Mr McLeish at the heart of their defence, were the fekin HOLDERS … and they’d beaten us in the Scottish Cup final just days after their Gothenburg zenith.

That Porto side did Aberdeen in the semis that season - they did us a bit earlier. I missed the home leg coz I was on a wee European away fixture of my own - playing Volleyball in Holland for my school!! - but by the time of the second leg, John Greig was sacked as manager and Tommy McLean’s care-taking wasn’t enough to keep us in Europe.

They ain’t as dangerous now as they were then or as they were two seasons ago. But Porto are ALWAYS dangerous. And, for what it’s worth, Do Dragao - their new stadium - has to be one of the most beautiful looking venues in football: Never been there, just remember seeing it during the coverage of last summer’s European Championships. We have to play them in their lovely new hoose on the Wednesday after we play Celtic at parkhead - away to both the 2003 Uefa Cup finalists within four days, and we’ll only be excited about the latter trip!

Mourinho is now at Chelsea and the Decos and Costinhas have all gone to pastures new … and richer. Co Adriaanse, who pumped us out the Uefa Cup with AZ Alkmaar last season, is finding his feet as their new boss. They are first up, at Ibrox, in three weeks and they are the side we must do better than if we’re to actually - hairs on back of neck time - QUALIFY FROM GROUP H!

Could that be “H” for “history” …?

(sorry - couldnae resist)

This weekend it’s “H” for Hibernian and the fact I don’t have time to talk about the visit of the Hibees is indicative of the problems we’ll face on the home front this season: With all the excitement and effort surrounding our quest to make a mark in the Champions League, we’ll suddenly find ourselves facing capable Scottish sides ready to bring us down a peg or three:

Last time we played Hibs, both sides ended up doing a lap of honour. I’d say we’ve got on slightly better since then. Riordan has been told he can go to Cardiff, Murray is now playing for us and Cauldwell is out - just to name a few of the personell debits paid by the visitors on Saturday. But we’ve had a hell of a week and the danger is we look at this as the easiest of our three-in-seven days home games. We suffered from a Euro-win hangover at Pittodrie two weeks ago and the Hibees are every bit as capable, even in their depleted state, as the Dons.

It’ll be another hard one … but hopefully this’ll be long a season of hard ones

Oooh - er missus. I’m slavering again …