The man who skipped down the left wing the last time Rangers faced Fiorentina in Europe, his head a mop of fair hair and his brain forever ahead of the play, is still hale and hearty at 71 and savouring retirement in Glasgow. Davie Wilson will be back at Ibrox tomorrow night for Rangers’ Uefa Cup semi-final, first-leg, with his mind effortlessly drifting back to those halcyon days of the 1960-61 season.

Back then, Rangers played Fiorentina in the first Cup Winners’ Cup final, a two-legged affair that Scot Symon’s team lost, going down 2-0 at Ibrox and losing 2-1 ten days later in Florence. This was the strong, formidable Rangers of Bobby Shearer, Eric Caldow, Jim Baxter and Ian McMillan, not to mention Wilson, a shrewd little winger with an extraordinary penchant for sniffing goals.

In total, Wilson scored 157 goals in 373 Rangers appearances — for a wide man a gluttonous haul. In one of the many Rangers FC tomes he is described as “arguably the club’s finest outside-left since Alan Morton: fast, direct, opportunistic, and with a particular talent for penalty-box positioning.” All that and more, though, couldn’t save Rangers in that Cup Winners’ Cup final of 47 years ago.

“We got torn apart by Fiorentina at Ibrox in the first game,” Wilson recalled yesterday. “Their star player was a wee guy from Sweden, Kurt Hamrin, like me an outside-left. He was everywhere with the ball that night. We had a better second leg out in Italy even though we lost 2-1 — what really cost us was failing to do the business in Glasgow.”

Wilson remains a smart, svelte, dapper little fellow, with a healthy glow testifying to a life of natural fitness and, among other things, an almost pious aversion to alcohol. He still plays five-a-side football every week, during which he gets to flash some of his former magic.

“I’m still 10st 2lb — just two pounds more than I was when I was a player,” he said. “I keep fit and I haven’t taken a drink in my life — never as a teenager, never as a player, and never since. I was just not interested. My father and mother never touched alcohol and I was the same. By Christ, though, some of my team-mates could take it all right.

“My highest salary at Rangers back then was £40 a week. Looking back, I never really thought that I was particularly better off than the next guy.

OK, I had my own car and I bought a new house, but I still had to pay off a mortgage like everyone else. We had nothing like the wealth of those guys playing today.

“In 1961, Everton offered £100,000 for me — it would have me among the first £100,000 footballers. But Rangers said to me, ‘You’re not going anywhere’, so it was a flat ‘No’. There was nothing I could do. But I still had a great career and I loved my time at Ibrox — I would have played for nothing for the club. Today, when people ask me if I still go to watch the Rangers, I reply, ‘Can a duck swim?’ ”

As older Rangers fans will recall, the Wilson style, which brought him numerous domestic honours as well as 22 Scotland caps, was a blend of swift, intelligent craft and a peculiar ability for a winger to sniff where the greatest opportunity lay in the box.

“I was good at reading things,” Wilson said. “I got into positions quickly and timed my runs well. I think my anticipation was the best part of my game, it served me well. I played under Scot Symon, a great Rangers manager, who was a very reserved, very quiet, very polite man. Symon never swore and always wore his hat. He was also a man for man-management, if you know what I mean. He used to say, ‘We’re going to play like this, now go and sort it out yourselves.’ Symon was a great manager, as the record books show.”

At Ibrox tomorrow, I asked Wilson, does he realistically expect to see the current Rangers team begin the process of a two-legged defeat of Fiorentina? “Oh, aye, I really think this team can beat them and get to the final,” he said. “Like I say, I’ve seen a lot of Rangers this season, and Walter Smith has got them playing. This Rangers side has got a game made for Europe. I’m not worried in the slightest. I think they’ll knock Fiorentina out.”

And if Rangers reach the final? “In the final I’d like us to meet Dick Advocaat’s lot from Russia [Zenit St Petersburg]. I’ve got a lot of respect for wee Dick and got to know him when he was in Glasgow. That would make a terrific final.”

Steven Naismith, the Rangers striker, has been warned he may not play again this season after a medical specialist assessed the state of his knee injury. The 21-year-old former Kilmarnock player was forced out of Sunday’s Scottish Cup semi-final in the early stages, shortly after a challenge from Martin Hardie, of St Johnstone.

Naismith’s injury will be assessed midway through next month, when he will learn if there is any possibility of him returning in time for the crucial final games. There could be a chance of Naismith being available in time for the Scottish Cup final against Queen of the South on May 24.

Naismith’s team-mates, Allan McGregor and Chris Burke, had their ankle injuries assessed yesterday but timescales have not been set for their returns to action.

They both risk missing most of the remainder of the season.