2001 / The List / Moravcik / Stephen

As Scottish football aspires towards an upward mobility, with Celtic and Rangers keen to prove that they can cut it on the European stage, an event like the Scottish Cup Final may become downgraded and lose its allure. However this year, by 3pm on Saturday 26 May, enough hype will have gone down about 'Celtic's historic treble bid' and Hibs' 'best side since Stanton, O'Rourke et al' that a frenzied carnival atmosphere is sure to greet the players as they step out onto the slightly bland new Hampden arena.

As the noise hits the players, we'll see the first 21 take on purposeful demeanours, some with puffed-out chests and looks of grim determination, while others with less to prove (the Larssons, Lamberts and Sauzees) stride on with the casual authority of the truly talented. But it's actually the person who'll inevitably emerge 22nd that we're here to celebrate; a straggler at the back of the Celtic line-up, seemingly so unfazed that he looks like he's just nipped down to the shops to pick up a pint of milk. That'll be Lubomir Moravcik, or just Lubo, on his day clearly the brightest light and most gifted performer in Scottish football.

Such is this Slovakian player's effect on his admirers that objective analysis tends to break down into warm smiles and foggy-eyed looks of affection. The Herald's excellent football analyst, Graham Spiers, is concerned that Moravcik is currently undermining his own status as an erudite and impartial analyst of the game. At a recent visit to Celtic Park he was alarmed to find Celtic fans coming up and slapping him on the back and thanking him for being 'one of us'; it made him realise he was perhaps going a little over the top in his recent praise of Moravcik. I ask him what's so special about the guy? 'It's just his... skill. It was so refreshing when he first came on the scene, and it's fantastic to see a player line-up to take a corner or free-kick, and on a whim decide which foot to take it with. It's his ability to change direction in mid-stride. He's just so... thrilling'.

Spiers admits that Moravcik's superior skill is highlighted amidst some of the galumphing footballers who populate Scotland's so-called beautiful game. But there's something else that makes Moravcik stand out. Musician Gerard Love, one-third of melodicists supreme, Teenage Fanclub, cites a basic humility or modesty about him that makes us tend to see him always as the underdog. But for Love, Moravcik's enigmatic quality has partly developed from the fans inability to find a memorable song for him; 'it's a hard one to rhyme', he admits, 'maybe too many syllables.'

Fabulously, Moravcik actually looks a bit like classic-period Jean-Paul Belmondo, baffled amidst the complexity of a Godard plot. While the plot of Scottish football is not so complex, we were slow to welcome this enigmatic stranger into our midst, almost seeing his arrival for a paltry £300,000 as an indicator of how shabby Celtic had become. Not that Moravcik seemed too bothered; under his mentor, Dr Josef Venglos, Celtic were soon playing expressive European-style football with Moravcik naturally the key man. Soon after his arrival he'd entered Celtic folk-lore with two wonderful goals in a 5-1 thrashing of the expensively assembled Rangers side. But this was a false dawn, and it's only now under a new coach, Martin O'Neill, and a more pragmatic style, that this long-suffering side seem to be making any progress.

Reluctant at first, O'Neill too has succumbed to Moravcik's magic aura, and it's no coincidence that most of Celtic's elevated moments tend to occur when the Slovak's on. Asked about Moravcik, O'Neill has mentioned his only frustration being that he's 35 rather than 25, and has asked the question, 'Where was he 10 years ago?' This idea of Moravcik's 'lost weekend' is slightly absurd, because actually he was blazing a fantastic trail from the Slovakian backwoods to the World Cup quarter-finals, and to a brilliant career in France where he was Zinedane Zidane's favourite player, and voted best import year after year.

But whatever, it's our pleasure that Moravcik turned up here, and has made football seem as much an art as a sport. A brilliant individualist but also a team player; a modest genius. Let's salute Lubo.