Shortly before 2pm tomorrow, Emmanuel Dorado will seek out something specific to wear; an item of clothing that reminds him of his past.

Then he will make his way to the kitchen freezer for an ice-cream before settling down on the sofa and firing up the “little machine”.

The “little machine” will, with any luck, provide Dorado’s afternoon entertainment: live coverage of the Betfred Cup final between his old club Livingston and St Johnstone.

A classy, left-sided centre-back, the Frenchman was part of Davie Hay’s team that lifted the trophy back in 2004 following a 2-0 win over Hibernian and, therefore, has no intention of missing the club’s latest bid for silverware – just so long as the technology holds up.

Glasgow Times:

“I will find something yellow in my closet to wear to be with them,” he says. “I will take my best position on the sofa with a little ice-cream and then I am going to try my best to find a channel [showing the game].

"I have a little machine that I’m not supposed to tell you about. I can catch all the channels in the world so I am going to do my best to watch the final. I am one of the biggest supporters of Livingston outside of Scotland. Then I will try to be quiet, to send some positive thoughts to the guys on the pitch.”

Never mind Livingston’s biggest supporter outside Scotland, he might just be the West Lothian club’s only one. His arrival at Almondvale in 2002, like most things about Livingston back then – and some might say since – was unconventional.

He joined the club from Malaga after the Spanish side’s purchase of a certain Fernando Sanz – the son of then Real Madrid president Lorenzo – had limited his appearances in the first team.

“When you have the son of the chairman of Real Madrid, who is a partner of Malaga, who is playing in your position, it is very difficult to play, says Dorado. “He was a good guy and I was very friendly with him but he was in the eleven every week and I was on the bench. It was difficult and I didn’t accept it so I wanted to try to find a solution.”

His choice was made easier by the presence of two of his best friends in a concrete commuter town, a world away from the Spanish seaside resort he was about to leave.

“Spain is a great place to play football, it’s a great place to live but the last year was difficult and the chance came for me to go to Scotland. I was friends with Javier Sanchez Broto and Quino Cabrera – I knew these guys from Malaga – and they said to me ‘Manu, don’t be stupid, it’s a very good club, a very nice country, everything is perfect, you should come. It was a very quick decision and I decided to sign.

“I was very happy when I arrived at Livingston. The facilities were good, there was a gym close to the stadium, a good physio room, it was very professional. I’m a very quiet guy, I don’t forget where I came from, I’m not very posh. I was very proud to be part of the story of this club.”

One of the largest chapters in a fairy tale that started in 1995 includes the events of March 14, 2004. There is something poetic about Dorado’s recollections of a day when goals from Derek Lilley and Jamie McAllister secured the cup for Livingston. Watching on at Hampden were 15 of Dorado’s friends and family – the bulk from Paris and the rest from Montpellier.

“It was like a dream,” recalls Dorado, who turns 48 next month. He doesn’t mean it in that hackneyed, cliched way. He’s describing something abstract. “Honestly, sometimes when I think about it, I am more happy now than I was in the moment. When I played the final, it was something normal for me – it was not normal, of course – but it is something that you don’t enjoy as much but you must do it nevertheless. Today when I look back, I am very proud of this [achievement].

“When you have family there you can put 50,000 people in the stadium but you will still find them. It’s unbelievable.

"As soon as I went on to the pitch, even though I didn’t know where my family was, I found them in 10 seconds. I was very happy, very excited, and I was sure that we were going to win, I felt that very strongly, even though I knew Hibs had a good team.”

The build-up to the final had been dominated by Livingston’s entry into administration a few weeks earlier. The ramifications of the club’s financial problems would still impact Dorado years later, when a dispute over a pay cut and his subsequent sacking was only resolved when

Livingston owner Angelo Massone settled the Frenchman’s outstanding wages in 2008.

If the matter bothered Dorado then, he is much more phlegmatic about it now.

“It was not very nice, to be honest, but I try to forget about this. I just want to keep the best [memories] of my time at Livingston, the most beautiful things: I was a part of this [the cup win], the people I met in the team, the people I met in the town.”

In a dressing-room that boasted a continental flavour – Oscar Rubio, David Fernandez, Fernando Pasquinelli all won medals at Hampden – he says the players were united by a common bond.

“There was no Spanish, no Scottish, no English, no French, no black, no white. It was just a team of good people. We had been in administration and some guys had to leave – we were very sad because of that – and I think the players wanted to do an important thing for the club because of the state we were in . . . and we did do it.”

Dorado was what the FIFA generation might call a “future star” as a youngster at Paris Saint-Germain where he shared a dressing room with footballing royalty. But a niggling knee injury at 17 precipitated another at 22 and he says he was never really the same player again. Did it alter his destiny?

“Yes, of course,” he says. “At that time, I was very high on the list [highly-rated]. I was training with the first team and I was meant to be the next centre-back of the team. It was a very, very strong team: George Weah, David Ginola, Ricardo Gomes at the back, Bernard Lama in goal, Paul Le Guen was in midfield, there was Valdo. Honestly the team was the same kind of strength as today. Canal+ had put in lots of money for players.

“The injury made me feel very down and I had to start again. I came back from it and they loaned me to Angers – a club in the first division in France for two years – but I broke my knee again.

“Somebody tackled me in a game and I tore my ligaments. It was eight months [out] and when I came back I was not the same [player].”

Dorado now lives in Essonne, a banlieue on the outskirts of Paris. It is a quiet, yet unremarkable town 25 km from the French capital. He is manager of local side Sainte-Genevieve who play in National 2A, the fourth tier of French football. It’s a division containing team names that might sound more at home on a wine menu, but there are a sprinkling of reserve teams belonging to well-established clubs, too, such as Lorient, Guingamp and Caen. Covid restrictions meant the French lower-league season was put into cold storage in late October at a time when Dorado’s side had made an impressive start to the season. He tells me he is due a Covid test that afternoon with French cases on the rise again and the season resumption tentatively scheduled for March 13.

As he details little bits and pieces about his team now it becomes evident there are similarities with the one he left behind in Scotland.

“Sainte-Genevieve is a very small club,” he says. “We are amateurs, we train four times a week. All my players are working outside of football, we are in a good position [third] in the league, but we know it will be quite difficult [when games return]. You could definitely say that it is similar to Livingston. Livingston is not the richest club in Scotland but they try to do their best and this year particularly they are doing very well.”

Dorado finishes by saying a big part of his heart remains in Edinburgh – where his 12-year-old daughter Eva lives – but it is apparent that a part of him remains in West Lothian, too.

“I have my jersey, I have a picture of the stadium at Livingston, of Hampden Park, when we were playing.

“Honestly, I keep everything because it is part of my life. I want to say hello to all of the guys from my old team and the club. I wish the best for them. I feel very lucky to have been a football player and very lucky to have met the people I met in Scotland.”

Tomorrow his heart will return there – however fleetingly – if he can just get that little machine to work.