In the end, they were merely ambushed by a football team, but beforehand they were repeatedly warned that the recent crowd trouble in Swiss football - fuelled by some neo-Nazi neanderthals - was ready to erupt again. Especially if they won.

Preparing for such an important game with this in the back of your mind isn't perfect, but in reality most players know that the safest place to be is usually on the pitch. It isn't always the case, though.

Early in my career when playing for the Scotland Under-21s at the Aztec Stadium in Mexico City, 100,000 locals didn't take kindly to us knocking their team out of the quarter-finals of the World Youth Championships. Stevie Clarke had the poor judgment to score the only goal provoking their fans into the obligatory riot.

The pitch was about 20 metres from the crowd and there was even a moat being patrolled by Alsatian dogs to safeguard our welfare. They weren't much help against the hail of missiles directed at us. They were directed at the home team, too, it has to be said.

Everything they could get their hands on was launched at us. The lumps of concrete were bad enough, but the five-gallon flagons made out of thick glass being thrown from 100 feet up in the stands took the biscuit. There was no lap of honour after our victory, just a sprint down a concrete path to a bunker dodging the artillery. Running this concrete gauntlet was made all the more difficult by the fact we were wearing metal studs in our boots.

There were two methods of reaching safety. First was to watch and dodge the ordnance while you ran, the second was to get your head down and just sprint for cover. Paul McStay went for the latter and, as I dodged about in his wake, a flagon exploded like a bomb inches behind him. It is not an exaggeration to say that, if he would have been half a second slower, he could have been killed.

They kept rioting for an hour before the police felt it was safe to sneak our bus quietly out the back roads to safety. Strangely, the affair turned out to be one of the most helpful experiences of my career. From that day on, I never once felt intimidated by any crowd I had to play in front of, no matter how much stick they gave me. Nobody could be as mad as 100,000 rampaging Mexicans, who'd had too much sun, too much Sol and too much ammunition. A few have come mighty close, though.

Playing at Cardiff City for Chelsea was about the worst I've encountered in Britain. At the height of the hooligan problem in the early eighties, large sections of both sets of the so-called fans took no interest whatsoever in the game being played. This time, being on the pitch was definitely the safest place to be. Trying to concentrate on the game as they kicked lumps out of each other was well nigh impossible, however, especially as you knew that your friends and family might be caught in the middle of it all.

Another fairly poisonous atmosphere can be savoured in Istanbul. I played there in a friendly for Everton against Galatasary. Their fans obviously thought it was bad form for us to be trying too hard, then worse still, actually having the gall to beat them. I had the cheek to score a couple and make the other in a 3-1 win. With five minutes to go, they had had enough, thousands of them stormed on to the field and chased us towards the tunnel.

Now here's the weird bit, as I saw them coming towards me I stopped running and decided just to walk off calmly between them, politely excusing myself. They didn't so much as lay a finger on me and, for all their wailing and gnashing of teeth, it looked like a 'front' to me.

As I cruised into the dressing room a few minutes after my team-mates, I gallously explained, 'Well, you know, I come from Easterhouse and I can sense if people are really dangerous, that lot out there aren't.'

A little later I realised the real reason why they weren't willing to attack me. There were TV cameras and policemen around and, if they got caught red-handed attacking a player - well, the phrase Midnight Express might explain their reticence.

As we left, the same fans smashed every window on the bus, but this time they had hankies hiding their faces. And this was only a friendly. My mates wanted to know what my Glaswegian background had to say about this, but they couldn't see me under the seat. This excitable behaviour from the Turks might have had some effect on my turning them down when they tried to sign me a few years later.

It does give a little bit of perspective to the treatment I personally received when I came back home to Scotland. Playing for Killie or Motherwell at Ibrox, I invariably got dog's abuse. With an 'inflammatory' name like Patrick Kevin Francis Michael Nevin, there are those who would suggest I deserved it.

But the torrent of sectarian bile I got for 90 minutes bore no relation whatsoever to the treatment I received before and after these games. I would park in the car park and walk 300 yards through the blue throng. I was only ever asked for the odd autograph and the worst piece of stick was a friendly, 'Yooz ur gonnae git hammered the day, wee man.'

I felt little or no real intimidation at those games and I guess the intimidation levels scarcely registered for the Celtic players the other night in Basle. Then again, they were probably more worried by the thought of going back in to face Martin O'Neill.