READING the squad lists from the 1996 European Under-21 Championship is perhaps best done in front of witnesses.

Many of the names are so big you fancy they would have little problem relieving you of your wallet, with a number going on to lift a collection of league titles, European championships and international accolades.

There is majesty, particularly, about the Spanish squad, which included Raul, Fernando Morientes and Oscar Garcia given each would later be crowned Spanish league winners and burnish their careers with European silverware, while the Italian and French teams glitter with World Cup winners and the Czechs named names which are easy to recognise, if not always to spell. Then there was Scotland: a squad straining to contain the promise of Brian McLaughlin, Charlie Miller, Simon Donnelly, Allan Johnston, Jackie McNamara and Christian Dailly, among others.

The class of '96 was considered a special group, although their distinctiveness has been better preserved by the inability of their successors to follow them to a finals. It is a realisation which invites McLaughlin to return to the present, but only briefly. "We need to change that," he says, bluntly.

A player and coach development officer with the Scottish Football Association now, the former Celtic winger has a hand in the future of young players, but he retains a firm grip of how his side fared in '96. Under Tommy Craig, Scotland topped a qualifying group ahead of Finland and Russia after dropping points in just one match. "We thought in any game we would either compete well or beat them," says McLaughlin. "I don't think it made any difference who it was."

It was an attitude which would serve the Scots well at in the finals and became a common trait on their journey to the semi-finals. "It was a really good time to be amongst that group," says McLaughlin. "We had guys like Charlie Miller, who was very bubbly, and then someone like Steven Pressley who was different. It was a great mix of people. Off the pitch, we all respected each other and on it we really came together."

They refused to be pulled apart until a meeting with runners-up Spain in the last four, before another narrow defeat in a third place play-off with France – results which would still have earned Scotland a place at the Olympics in Atlanta had they been able to play under a Team GB banner. Still, one purpose of the under-21s is not for a player to make a name for himself but to show that he has the necessary tools and, within two years of that match with Scotland, Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires would win the World Cup with France, before adding the European Championship in 2000 alongside a third graduate, Sylvain Wiltord.

The names jump out at with such ferocity that one is tempted to duck. Scotland did not. "There's no doubt about it, we were good," McLaughlin says, adding a swagger to his stroll down memory lane. "[Before the Euros] we beat France in the Toulon Tournament, 2-0 on their home patch, and that was a team full of future World Cup winners. At the time, we just turned up expecting to beat them. We played against some fantastic players, who we beat.

"At the time we knew a couple of the Spanish guys like Raul and [Ivan] de la Pena as they had just broken into the Real and Barca first teams. We didn't know much about the Italians, but you look at the names and they had nine or 10 guys who became World Cup winners."

It is a recollection McLaughlin has come to cherish but which would also become poignant since injury would rob him of any game time at the finals. The winger had shone for Celtic's first team but his campaign would finish under a cloud as a groin injury eased enough to ensure a seat on the plane, but not sufficiently for a place in the XI. He still believed the squad would succeed, though.

"So many of them are still in the game," he says. "Simon and Jackie are at Dundee United, Jamie Fullarton and Dougie Freedman are together [at Bolton] . . . that is testament to a group who were all football daft. When you have so many of them, you are always going to have a fighting chance."