On a pedestal, never to be knocked off.
Don't ever suggest to Paul Lambert that a Scottish side will top the success of the Lisbon Lions.
Not unless one can miraculously upset the odds - not to mention the Euro elite gazillions - to somehow win the Champions League any time soon.
Even then the former Celtic midfielder might not be convinced.
Lambert was taken aback by Kevin Thomson ’s claim that the current Rangers team would go down as the best ever to come from our shores if they win the Europa League this evening - better even than Jock Stein’s European Cup trailblazers of 1967.
The former Hoops’ star is well qualified to argue against Thomson’s opinion, to be fair.
This is a footballer who arrived at Parkhead just months after lifting the big one - the European Cup - himself with Borussia Dortmund and going on to captain Celtic in the UEFA Cup Final defeat to Porto in Seville in 2003.
Not that anyone in Martin O’Neill’s side that year ever thought they were on the verge of matching the club’s greatest achievement.
Lambert admits he felt the weight of history and the standards set by the Lions every single day during his eight years in the east end of Glasgow.
Their success in becoming the first British side to win the European Cup was made all the greater by the fact every member of Stein’s side came from within a 30-mile radius of Celtic Park.
It also came just a year after the Hoops had ended a 12-year title drought.
So Thomson’s respectful words in yesterday’s Record that a Rangers win in Seville “would be the best achievement ever by any Scottish club” due to their own journey back from the doldrums doesn’t wash with Lambert.
It hardly even touches the surface.
He told Record Sport: “Rangers have done well to get to this final, no shadow of a doubt.
“I get where Kevin is coming from as he’s an ex-Rangers player.
“But the Lisbon Lions are on another planet.
“There’s no way on this earth that any other team in Europe will win the big one - the European Cup or Champions League as it is now - with a team of players all from within a 30-mile radius like that Celtic side did.
“It will never be done again.
“The Lions are rightly on a pedestal. That will always be the greatest team that’s come out of Scotland.
“They were the first British team to win it. They were all local guys and they were the champions of Europe. They beat the champions of five different countries including the mighty Inter Milan in the final to do it.
“Yes, Rangers have been on an incredible journey over the past decade.
“But you have to remember that Celtic too hadn’t won a title for 12 years before becoming champions in 1966 to enter the European Cup the following season.
“Rangers have done really well to reach this final and it will be a great occasion for them. But to compare the two achievements - even if they win - is way off the mark.
“Not just that but it discredits the Rangers team that won the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1972 as well.
“They had great players in that era and it was an incredible achievement.”
Lambert wore the armband when O’Neill’s Celtic became the first Scottish team since Aberdeen in 1983 to reach a Euro final 19 years ago.
It ended in agony, a 3-2 extra time defeat to Jose Mourinho’s Porto, after a magnificent run in which Liverpool, Blackburn, Celta Vigo and Stuttgart were all brushed aside.
But the former midfielder insists that at no stage leading up to the final did anyone in the Hoops camp suggest they had a chance to go on a level with the team of ’67.
Lambert said: “No chance. Never. Ask any of that team from 2003 that got to Seville, they would all say the same .. that we might have been on the verge of something special but it would never match the achievement of the Lions.
“For any Scottish side to have a chance then they’d need to win the Champions League.
“It’s the pinnacle of the European game. Look at the Liverpool v Real Madrid final coming up this month.
“That’s proper elite level. The Europa League is a great competition but the Champions League is a different ball game.
“We thrived on the pressure of having to try and live up to the standards set by the Lions, whether it was possible or not.
“I’m sure all Celtic players are the same. Jock Stein and his players set the bar for Celtic Football Club.
“We fell short in the UEFA Cup Final and we had a right good team. But even if we’d won it would not have matched the Lions.
“I met them - great guys, so respectable, wee Jinky Johnstone the lot of them were brilliant, brilliant human beings.
“A lot of them are no longer with us which is terribly sad.”
Lambert will tune in to this evening’s final but has no idea which way it will go.
Having spent a year and a half in the Bundesliga with Dortmund he keeps a close eye on German football and is well aware of the test lying in store for the Ibrox side.
He said: “It’s 50/50. Eintracht Frankfurt’s form has been excellent, they turned over Barcelona and then beat West Ham.
“They have a fanatical support and it should be some occasion. It’s just too close to call.”
