First capped by his country in April 2004, goalkeeper Artur Boruc left Poland 15 months later, on loan to Gordon Strachan’s Celtic. Promptly taking over the first-team jersey, he very soon made the arrangement permanent. In his five seasons at Parkhead, during the first three of which Celtic won the SPL, Artur seldom missed a game. Yet his stay is perhaps best remembered for an incident in February 2006, when gestures that he made to Rangers fans at Ibrox led to inquiries at the highest levels of the law, church and parliament, as these bodies struggled to distinguish his blessing himself, as a Roman Catholic, from the less Christian gesticulations he had made.

The caution he received for a breach of the peace made it clear that his “act of religious observance” was not at issue, as he inevitably became known as “the Holy Goalie”. That same year, he was Poland’s first-choice ’keeper during the World Cup Finals in Germany, on his way to amassing 65 caps. In July 2010, he became involved in another legal skirmish, which was resolved, the following year, when the News of the World compensated him, in the sum of £70,000, for defamation.

By then, he was playing for Fiorentina in Serie “A”, avoiding controversy but causing a stir with his exotic tattoos. When his contract expired in the summer of 2012, he became a free agent. Linked with QPR and Everton, he agreed with a one-year deal, under Nigel Adkins at St Mary’s. Artur was not an instant crowd-pleaser and was rested after an altercation, in only his second game, with barrackers behind his goal. He bounced back on New Year’s Day, however, to become not only a regular but –

helped by a stunning penalty-save in the final minute at a snowy Norwich in March – a seemingly popular hero.

The manager was of the same view. Extending Artur’s contract, the following month, to the summer of 2015, Mauricio Pochettino declared himself “happy and very satisfied” to get the man who was “crucial for us.” Responding to his competent English, Artur expressed his pride “to be part of a big prospect.” Pochettino, however, was soon prospecting somewhere else and his replacement, Ronald Koeman, immediately made Celtic’s Fraser Forster the most expensive British goalkeeper, which brought the curtain down with immediate effect on Artur’s St Mary’s career. After a five year period at Bournemouth which took in his 40th birthday and 79 PL appearances Artur went home, signing for Legia Warsaw, the current Polish Ekstraklasa champions.