There is one man who, sitting in his apartment in St Petersburg tonight, will watch the Champions League final and, not for the first time watching AC Milan, will feel a mite miffed. Dick Advocaat, now coaching Zenit St Petersburg in Russia, was the Rangers manager who thought that Gennaro Gattuso was hopeless and, after only 16 months in Glasgow, ejected him from Ibrox to Salernitana for £4 million in 1998. It was a measure of Gattuso’s low stock that Rangers were thrilled to grasp such a sum.

It is remarkable, in any estimation of Gattuso, to look back to those surreal times he spent in Scotland. He signed for Rangers in June 1997 and played 40 matches for the Glasgow club before Advocaat shipped him out. And the truth is, no retrospective gloss should be applied to the aggressive and often cumbersome Gattuso back then, compared to the calculating and snarling player that he is today. At Rangers, in his infancy as a football player, Gattuso had a habit of barging into opponents – normally without the ball – as if he did not know the rules of the game.

In 1997, Walter Smith, who was the Rangers manager at the time, was alerted to the availability of Gattuso when he tried to sign Marco Negri, the forward, from Perugia. The agent who brokered the Negri deal intrigued Smith with news of another Perugia player – an 18-year old tyro – who, because of a loophole in the Italian FA’s rules, could be signed by Rangers as an amateur because he had not yet played ten games for his club.

That player was Gattuso, who had caught the eye in Italian international youth teams but had yet to establish himself in Serie A. The midfield player arrived at Ibrox, causing uproar and apoplexy in Italy, where, as comical as it sounds, the mighty Italians were bleating at having one of their prized assets thieved and swayed by the glamour of Rangers.

Yet what followed – and what has happened to Gattuso since – only makes his 16 months in Scotland baffling. Here in our midst arrived this impassioned, impetuous and not always coordinated player, who clattered into opponents and did not always find that the ball stayed put when he tried to trap it. Whatever Gattuso had at Rangers back then, he did not have an abundance of skill.

I can recall one game in particular, an Old Firm match at Ibrox in November 1997, on a day of grey clouds, a slippery surface and a highly combustible atmosphere, when twice inside the opening moments, Gattuso charged straight at Celtic players with the aim of flattening them. He was an oddity in Scotland: an Italian midfield player for whom the words “finesse” or “sophistication” could be used only mockingly. Even from Scotland’s most astute football observers, the comments being passed about Gattuso in the 1997-98 season became more withering by the week.

Poor Advocaat, who arrived at Rangers from PSV Eindhoven to replace Smith in 1998 and let Gattuso go – a decision that, at the time, hardly anyone quibbled with.

With such players as Arthur Numan, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Jorge Albertz and Claudio Reyna, Advocaat instilled in Rangers what one club historian called “the team’s most impressive football in 30 years”, and one player whom the Dutchman did not include in this strategy was Gattuso. Advocaat had taken one look at the reckless, impulsive Italian on his first game in charge of Rangers – a 2-1 defeat by Heart of Midlothian at Tynecastle – and decided that he had seen enough.

Three months later, and after only three more games for Rangers, Gattuso was sent back to Italy. In total he had played 40 games in a 16-month stay at Ibrox. When he left, with Rangers doing well in Europe and storming to the Scottish title under Advocaat, the transfer went almost unnoticed, with scarcely a whimper of protest among supporters.

The mystery of Gattuso, and his evolution into one of Europe’s most prized and calculating defensive midfield players, is more intriguing when you look back to those days at Rangers. Hand on heart, you just could not see it happening. Even Smith, whom Gattuso cites as the seminal influence on his career, admits to being surprised at the player he has become.

“We looked at him in a practice game, thought that he had something and decided to sign him,” Smith said. “He was young, but we felt that he could progress. He looked a genuine prospect, a valuable team player, but I admit I’m a bit surprised that we are now looking at a player of [three] Champions League finals and a World Cup winner. He was always a decent player, but, technically, he has improved greatly.”

In fact, Gattuso’s rise became meteoric. He had hardly begun establishing himself at newly promoted Salernitana in 1999 when Milan, a few months later, signed the dynamic midfield player for £8 million. In Scotland, people were askance at the sum. This, surely, could not be the same feckless, clumsy Gattuso who had the unique distinction of, while being Italian, playing football like a Scotsman?

As the years have passed, and Gattuso has matured into the essence of intelligent combat, Advocaat has had to live with the decision he made to move the midfield player out of Rangers. In football, almost as a parlour game, every manager can quote such a “call” he got wrong and whenever Advocaat’s name comes up, some Rangers fan somewhere will always say: “He’s the manager that got rid of Gattuso.”

Fifty Gattuso caps for Italy later, it is strange how flawed that decision looks today, and how shrewd it seemed back then.

Happy families

Gennaro Gattuso may not have made the grade at Rangers, but he has fond memories of Scotland because he met his wife, Monica, in Glasgow. The couple met through Monica’s father, who owns an Italian restaurant in the city, and they tied the knot three years ago. Gattuso calls himself a Rangers supporter and describes Walter Smith as “the best manager I have played for”. He follows Rangers’ fortunes on satellite television in Italy and has set his heart on finishing his career at Ibrox when his AC Milan contract runs out in 2011.

“When I left Glasgow, it wasn’t through the main door,” he said. “I was forced to flee like a thief. I’m a player who wants people to see how much I put into things, not someone who runs away in the night.” (Kaveh Solhekol)