PAUL Lambert relished meeting up with a few of the Borussia Dortmund players he won the Champions League with back in 1997, Stephane Chapuisat, Lars Ricken and Karl-Heinz Riedle included, when the newly-formed BVB Legends took on their Liverpool counterparts in their first ever game in the Westfalenstadion last month.

Yet, when Lambert puts on his boots to play with some of his old muckers from his Celtic days, including John Hartson, Neil Lennon, Shaun Maloney and Stylian Petrov, next week it promises to be an emotional rather than an enjoyable experience.

The Liam Miller tribute match, which will be played in front of a sell-out crowd of 45,000 in the Pairc Ui Chaoimh stadium in Cork on Tuesday afternoon, is an occasion that he is keen to lend his support to, but dearly wishes did not have to go ahead.

“It is a terrible tragedy that such a young guy and such a fit guy has lost his life,” said Lambert. “If you can help in any way in such a situation you obviously do so. It will be good to do our bit and help his wife and his three young children. I believe the fans are going to turn out in large numbers which is great. But it is a sad, sad thing.”

Memories of Miller, the former Celtic, Manchester United, Sunderland, Hibernian and Republic of Ireland midfielder who tragically passed away aged just 36 back in February following a battle with pancreatic cancer, will come flooding back for Lambert when the event gets underway.

He can still vividly recall the quiet and slight kid who was invited to train with the first team at Celtic following some eye-catching displays for the age-group sides at Barrowfield back in the early 2000s. He quickly decided the youngster had real talent and a genuine chance of making it in the game. He would be proved emphatically right.

“I was older and Liam was just finding his feet really,” he said. “But when you watched the young lads play you would see a fleeting glimpse of what he had to offer. You would think ‘this boy could be good’.

“He came in to a dressing room with big, big players in it during an era when Celtic were a match for just about any team. Liam had to try and oust myself, Lenny, Petrov, Thompson, Agathe. There were some strong players ahead of him. I am sure that was daunting. But he got one or two games and grew.

“The biggest compliment I could pay him is that he wanted to learn, was keen to play. That was obvious when he started to train with us. He wasn’t disrespectful. He never thought ‘I’ve made it’. He knew he had to improve. For me, that is the mark of a top player, being humble.

“Listen, he was a good footballer as well, really good. When he did get in he showed what an intelligent player he was. He could play one touch, he could see a pass, he recognised where the danger was, he knew when to release it, he never took too many touches, which is important as a central midfielder. I played in the same position as him and was a little bit older and he was always asking for advice which was nice.”

Looking back now, Lambert feels that then Celtic manager Martin O’Neill, who had just led the Glasgow club through to the UEFA Cup final in Seville in 2003, deserves great credit for how rapidly Miller matured.

“What Martin did with Celtic was extraordinary,” he said. “He built a team that people still recognise as one of their strongest ever to this day. But the gaffer was great with Liam. He really started to come on under him. Don’t get me wrong, I saw him get the occasional rollicking, but you need that sometimes. It was great for the club to have a young player come into that environment.

“Liam was at Celtic at the right time. He had everything he needed to come through – great players around about him and a top manager teaching him and getting him into a mindset where he wanted to win football matches.”

The Celtic supporters and wider footballing world soon discovered what a unique talent Miller was too. He featured regularly for the first team in the opening games of the 2003/04 season and impressed. But a Champions League group game against French champions Lyon at home was when he truly arrived. He came off the bench in the second-half and promptly scored the opening goal, a deft downward header from a Henrik Larsson cross, in a memorable 2-0 triumph.

“I was injured that night,” said Lambert. “Liam came on and did well. He had earned the right to come into that environment. But he still had to go out and do it. The big games at Parkhead are amazing. But you have to perform. Liam did that. Fans realised pretty quickly they had a good player on their hands when he started to make an impact.”

That performance, and others like it that term against Anderlecht and Bayern Munich, thrust him to the attention of Sir Alex Ferguson and he signed a pre-contract agreement with Manchester United in January.

A host of Old Trafford greats, including Andy Cole, Ryan Giggs, Roy Keane, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes, will also take to the field on Tuesday afternoon in honour of a fine player, a devoted husband and a doting father.

Paul Lambert knows Liam Miller was all of those things, but can recollect his old Celtic team mate, above all else, just being a decent bloke. “He was a really good kid,” he said. “He liked to have a laugh as much as everyone. It is a terrible that he has been taken from us at such a young age.”