Paul Lambert has revealed he had the best clubs in Europe chasing him in the wake of his stunning display for Dortmund in the 1997 Champions League Final.
But a combination of a family illness and the persistence of Celtic boss Wim Jansen resulted in the Scot returning home within a year of that triumph in Munich. Speaking to the Off the Record podcast, Lambert said: “After the Champions League Final, I had the option to go anywhere in Europe. I had teams phoning: ‘come here, come here’. It was incredible.
“My answer was always ‘no, this club has given me what I have today and I’m really happy here’. Then there came a point when my son wasn’t keeping too good. He had a thing called febrile convulsions, which can affect kids when their temperatures can become so high that they have convulsions. It was happening more and more frequently. Celtic came in. They’d asked me a few times at the beginning and I’d said no to them as well.
“Scotland were playing Belarus up in Aberdeen. Wim and Murdo MacLeod appeared like Rentaghost in the bootroom at Aberdeen! I don’t know how they got in there but they did and Wim said, ‘would you give me one more chance? I want to sign you’.
“I was like, ‘I’ve got a game for Scotland here’. I played the game. Then Dortmund had a chat with me, saying they knew I had a problem with my son and Celtic were interested. But they told me they’d do everything for me. I told them I didn’t want that – I was there to work for THEM. My job was to win football matches and make the club successful.
“I didn’t want the club to pander to me. I was never that big a player for them. But eventually it became too much. My son kept conking out at certain points in his life and we thought, ‘this is too difficult. Let’s go home’.
“Then the Celtic thing happened quickly, I didn’t realise the send-off I’d get from Dortmund. I didn’t expect that.
“People were crying at the stadium and at my car, putting banners on it saying ‘Don’t Go’. That was a really tough moment and it’s why I never kicked my backside at Celtic for a couple of months after I signed. I could have signed for anyone, Juve, anyone and I would have had the same feeling – ‘what have I done?’"
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