STUART McCALL today told how his old Rangers team-mate Paul Gascoigne made his daughter’s day – despite destroying his dreams of sinking the Auld Enemy on their own patch.

The Scotland assistant coach is desperate to get back to Wembley in the World Cup qualifiers after playing in the Scotland side that lost 2-0 in the finals of the 1996 European Championship.

Gazza killed Craig Brown’s side stone dead that afternoon with a stunning goal moments after Gary McAllister had been denied from the penalty spot by goalkeeper David Seaman.

However, the Ibrox legend still showed his kind-hearted side despite being involved in a battle royal with McCall in the middle of the park.

“There were club battles all over the pitch that day,” recalled McCall. “I was up against Gazza, a Rangers team-mate. It was Tottenham pair Colin Calderwood and Teddy Sheringham against each other and Alan Shearer and Colin Hendry of Blackburn Rovers.

“I’m always focused on the game, so I’m not one for swapping shirts. Before the match, Ally McCoist had asked for Gazza’s shirt and so had Darren Jackson as he’d played with him at Newcastle.

“We came off at half-time, Gazza ran down the tunnel, took his top off, gave it to me and said: ‘That’s for your little girl’.

“I’d done a TV interview the night before and, because my daughter was born in England and loved Gazza from Rangers, she wanted it to be 3-3 with me and Gazza getting a hat-trick.

“I think I said something like she would have loved Gazza’s shirt, but I’d never have asked him for it.”

McCoist did get the shirt Gascoigne wore during the second half of the match, but McCall remains content that he got the jersey his former Ibrox colleague failed to score in.

“After Gazza had given me his shirt, I put it in my bag at half-time and never mentioned it again,” he said.

“After the match, we were on the bus going back to Birmingham, where our next game was taking place, and was sitting right at the back.

“Coisty had Gazza’s shirt out and I was asking him how he could take the shirt off someone who had just knocked us out the tournament.

“He said I was only jealous. I said ‘Jealous? I got a shirt that DIDN’T score against us’.

“Gazza’s goal was the difference, but, if the penalty had gone in, he was coming off.”

McCall had managed to keep Gascoigne relatively quiet that afternoon and was involved in the move that saw Scotland awarded a penalty in the second half when Tony Adams had brought down Gordon Durie in the area.

He can’t help but think how things might have been different had Scotland captain McAllister beaten Seaman from the spot.

“Terry Venables, the England manager, actually had the board up and Gazza was coming off, but the keeper saved it, they broke from the corner and Gazza scored one of the best goals ever seen in a Scotland-England game,” groaned McCall.

“We deserved more for the performance. Everyone will point to the penalty, but I thought it was a really good save. Gary struck it well and it hit Seaman on the elbow, so it was more down to good goalkeeping for me.

“I don’t think we should have won the Euro 96 game, but we possibly didn’t deserve to lose.”

Venables replaced Stuart Pearce with Jamie Redknapp at half-time in that game and McCall reckons that played a crucial role in the eventual outcome with Alan Shearer scoring the opening goal just eight minutes after the interval.

“I remember England were booed off at half-time,” said McCall. “We’d done our job. Coming out for the second half, we got a shout they were making a substitute. We didn’t know what the change was, but, as we went up the tunnel, Craig Brown shouted: ‘It’s Redknapp that’s on’.

“They changed their formation and that caught us a bit. We didn’t get to grips with it soon enough in the 10 or 15 minutes after half-time and they got the goal.”

McCall insists, however, that Gascoigne was as good as gold when reporting back to Ibrox after the summer break.

“When we went back for the first day of pre-season, he was great,” said McCall. “Other than the goal, he was actually quite quiet in that game.”

McCall followed Scotland as a fan in his youth and still cherishes breaking the ban on away fans in 1981 to see John Robertson score the winner from the spot.

“People ask me about my favourite Scotland moment playing-wise, but, for me, it was going to Wembley in 1981,” he said. “I went down on a bus from Leeds with my pal.

“I bought something Scottish at every service station, so I got a See You Jimmy wig I didn’t really need, a St Andrews flag and a Lion Rampant.

“I was only 17 and I was at Bradford. It was funny because I remember getting the 6pm bus home from Golders Green after the game, so I was back in Leeds for just before 10pm.

“I was head to toe in tartan and I went into my local and a guy said: ‘Do you want to give it a rest?’. He thought I’d got all dressed up to watch it on telly in the house and was milking it, but I had the match programme and threw it down in front of him to prove I had been there.”