HAMPDEN Park was where it all got started for Andy Robertson. So it was appropriate yesterday that the national stadium scoreboards should display a message of good luck for the former Queen’s Park full back as he prepares to play in the biggest match in club football in Kyiv tonight.

About to becoming the first Scot to grace this stage since Paul Lambert in 1997 – only a ludicrous refereeing decision prevented Darren Fletcher from joining that list – Robertson also wants to send out a message: that Scottish players mixing it with best shouldn’t be such a remarkable thing in future.

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“I think as a country that we can be quite harsh on ourselves,” he said yesterday. “I’ve never thought that being Scottish should mean there was any kind of barrier to me getting where I wanted to go and I still feel like I can keep improving. It seems to be a big thing to people that a Scottish players is going to play in the Champions League final but hopefully that will become a more regular thing.”

Robertson’s story has been well told by now. If it illustrates anything at all, then it is surely the power of self belief, the importance of maintaining it even when others maybe don’t believe in you. That was the case when Celtic released him as a teenager, forcing him to rebuild his career at Queen’s Park, earning extra cash by answering the phone and selling tickets at Mount Florida. It was also the case when he found himself left out of the team in favour of Alberto Moreno in the opening stages of his Anfield career. It is, of course, also precisely the kind of self belief which will also serve him well in Kyiv tonight against the superstars of Real Madrid.

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Each step in the journey has helped in its own way but those Hampden years seemed worthy of returning to yesterday, especially as the national stadium flashed out its message of good luck. After a couple of years in the youth ranks, it all began – under the management of Gardner Speirs - with an Irn Bru Cup tie against Berwick Rangers at Shielfield Park in the summer of 2012, in front of a crowd of just 372. Level at full-time and extra time, the match was eventually settled by a penalty shoot-out in which Queen’s Park goalkeeper Neil Parry smashed in the decisive spot kick. “The first time I remember setting eyes on him was training a couple of weeks before the season,” says his then team-mate Jamie Longworth, fresh from a promotion campaign with Stenhousemuir. “We did a game, the first team against the youth team and Andy just stepped up and put one in the top corner from 30 yards. You could tell the boy had class.

“Obviously it is a different kettle of fish down in England but at the same time you know when he gets on the ball he isn’t afraid of anyone. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him take on Ronaldo and go past him.

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“You couldn’t really imagine his rise to fame but that is the Andy I remember, more interested probably in scoring goals than stopping them and I think that is still the case. He always wants to go forward, with no fear, no hesitation. He got me a good few goals that season because his delivery was incredible, you would just stand in the box and know it was going to come to you.”

Perhaps even more remarkable than making it all the way from Scotland to this continental and global showpiece is the fact that he has managed to do so without anyone having a bad word to say about him. “When he wasn’t playing for the first team and reserves, he would take tickets for Hampden, or for concerts,” says Longworth. “Now five years later, we are taking tickets for him when he plays for Scotland. That is how much it has changed. I knew back then he was a great footballer, but it was more than that, he was just a great, great lad. I know how hard he and his family has worked so I can’t take anything away from him.”

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From Queen’s Park it was off to Dundee United, the Tannadice side paying £5,000 to the amateurs for the privilege and paying him £4,000-a-week in wages. Jackie McNamara had actually tried to recruit him for Partick Thistle prior to changing club that summer. “There was competition from Partick Thistle and St Johnstone,” McNamara recalled recently. “But I took his mum and dad round our training facilities[at St Andrews] and explained how we planned to develop him. I remember his first day at training when he collected his kit then disappeared. Our kitman found him in the youth team’s dressing room because that’s where he thought he’d be playing! I’ve never seen anyone benefit so much from full-time training. We transformed him from a man into a boy in one season.”

Robertson, whose son Rocco will be nine months old on Saturday, has served his apprenticeship alright but his emergence still seems sudden. His first ever memory of a Champions League final was watching Zinedine Zidane volley in the winner at Hampden in 2002 and this time last year he watched the showpiece in his house with some takeaway food and a few of his recently-relegated Hull City pals. “They all came round to mine, we got a curry,” says Robertson.