By Chick Young BBC Scotland football correspondent

The Scottish game sets off on the road to football righteousness this weekend. It should prepare for breakdowns, diversions, closures and chaos along the way.

It should be a journey on which it can cleanse its soul, reafirm the faith and restore the belief.

This is the season in which, can I remind you, the international game has the chance to walk through the Pearly Gates of a major finals for the first time since 1998.

That, indeed, would be a miracle. But, then again, it is nothing short of that - that we are even in the final mix given the soccer royalty with which we gathered when the draw was made for Euro 2008.

A nation awaits the closure of a decade in the international wilderness.

Can the wily McLeish rally the tartan troops for a Euro 2008 push?

But the collective responsibility for the salvation of our game lies way beyond Alex McLeish and his team.

A serious impact at club level in Europe is something for which we seemed to have mislaid the recipe, notwithstanding the gratefully received arrival of Celtic in the 2003 Uefa Cup final.

However, take some medical advice from me and don't hold your breath for Dunfermline romping through the tournament in a similar manner.

If you think Aberdeen, on the other hand, will light up the tournament then do see your doctor about your current medication.

But would it be too much to ask that both halves of the Old Firm could swagger through the qualifying rounds and into the Champions' League and then go forth hand-in-hand to the final knockout stages?

MY SPORT: DEBATE Give your reaction to Chick's first column of the season

May the football gods be with them as reward for their efforts to unburden themselves from a century and more of the yoke of religious bigotry.

The efforts of Rangers and their new crusade are first to be put to the test against FK Zeta Golubovci - Scrabble gold but football unknowns - in Podgorica, a town that sounds like it belongs in Lord of the Rings but is in fact in Montenegro.

The club are screaming to their supporters that Uefa are watching - and more importantly listening - for songs of praise that would not get airtime in the Rocky Horror Show, never mind a church hymnary.

Rangers, Celtic and, for that matter, Gretna, should their fans become so inclined, WILL be deducted points for sectarian abuse. In Europe, or by the Scottish Premier League.

A good Euro campaign should cheer up Celtic boss Gordon Strachan

Even Ally McCoist has claimed that he would have a go at any alleged supporter castigating the Pope and try to educate the socially inadequate in question that he or she, far from helping the team, was in fact navigating them in the direction of a three-point fine.

And, hopefully, as we pray for a league season that will be meaningful until its last throes, three points will mean everything when final championship sums are done.

In short, all the game can say is: "Do what you like in your own home, just don't bring it to the match." It is a curious sort of progress, if progress is what it is.

But at least the clubs are doing all they can to eliminate the cancer, even if they ackowledge that a century of filth is a major clean-up operation.

Rangers and Celtic did become giants on the back of a religious divide, but you can hardlly blame the current custodians for that.

So there we have it. Scottish football on the road to Damascus. Rid of the noose of bigotry, glorious in Europe, showtime till the final curtain and back from the international wilderness.