ASK ANY technical director, president or coach in La Liga which player they would take, now, from FC Barcelona and the answer would not be Samuel Eto'o, Ronaldinho, Carles Puyol, Leo Messi or Xavi Hernandez. I'm cheating in knowing that over 90% of such judges of "horse-flesh" would choose Andres Iniesta because it's a question which is posed by the magazines, newspapers and soccer-TV of football-obsessed Spain almost every month.

So long as you don't use the same tailor as the Bee Gees, Iniesta would fit in your trouser pocket.

He possesses the fine ruddy pallor of Casper the Friendly Ghost, the volume level he uses when he speaks wouldn't get him shushed in a library and if there is a Top Shop in Catalunya then that's where a chunk of his now sizeable wages must go when he needs to fill his wardrobe.

Boys' sizes of course.

But there he'll be in the midfield, or full back, or left wing, or right wing or somewhere on Wednesday night lobbing grenades, hauling team-mates out of fox-holes and generally raising morale all along the three lines of embattled "azulgrana" players.

Iniesta goes where he's told to, does what he's told to, doesn't put on weight like Ronnie, never bitches and snides like Eto'o, wouldn't dream of sulking like Deco, won't dish the dirt with the rest of the girls, like Edmilson did when he ripped Barca's squad apart for lack of work ethic a few weeks ago. He's the foot-soldier who just legs it.

If he has faults then they are his Lilliputian stature, the fact that he simply doesn't have a nasty bone in his body and is more likely to relieve himself in the communion cup than leave stud marks on a shin - plus his tendency to fail spectacularly in front of goal every once in a blue moon.

Otherwise Iniesta is dynamic, dynamite, a diamond. Perpetual movement meets unlimited technique.

Whiter than virgin-snow he may be but there simply has to be Kenyan blood in there. Iniesta sometimes seems to be moving at twice the speed of everyone around him, albeit with legs pumping in an Ant Hill Mob kind of way.

His judgment of how to unbalance an opponent, trick him with sleight of boot, harass someone into surrendering possession, release a slide-rule pass and that devastating capacity for covering twice as much grass as anyone else on the pitch - all of those trademark skills means that if any of La Liga's predators did try to fulfill their wish then, as of Iniesta's renewed contract late last month, it would cost 220m to "do a Figo" and buy him out of his deal. He committed to the Camp Nou for another eight years.

Hartley and Brown versus Toure and Iniesta - well it's a battle which would be worth the entrance money all on its own this week at Parkhead. Except for the fact that the wee man might be absent. No, not missing altogether (unless last night's match at Zaragoza really did turn into a war zone), just deployed elsewhere.

Like other such multi-talents as Paul Scholes and Raul, Iniesta often suffers from a coach forgetting that it's a gift from God to have a footballer who knows his own position to perfection. Mr Coaching Smarty Pants (remember Scholes as the player between Manchester United's midfield and a single striker? Or Raul as Madrid's right midfielder?) will tinker with perfection, regret it and then restore football's natural order. The trouble with Iniesta is that he simply does what's ordered and not only never moans but rarely drops his level of excellence.

"The only positions I've not played for Barca since I made my debut in the Champions League five years ago would be goalkeeper, centre forward and centre half" admits the 5ft 6in bundle of Peter Perfectness. "Probably best not to try me in goals either.

"Of course people are always asking me if it prejudices my career to keep on changing position from one game to the next and it's true that playing defensive central midfield in our 4-3-3 formation bears next to no relation to playing wide left up front. But it's hardly hell on earth to switch on the defensive part of your game and I like to think of my ability to play across the formation as an advantage."

As the Parkhead tie looms and given the statistic that not since Celtic last eliminated Barcelona from European competition, almost exactly four years ago in the Uefa Cup, has Frank Rijkaard's side scored so few goals, perhaps Iniesta serves as the perfect microcosm for what's going on within the Barca ranks right now.

Increasingly good at finishing chances around the edge of the box, devastatingly good at darting past full backs and shunting the ball into the path of a Barca striker, Iniesta is regularly deployed so deep in the midfield that he must sometimes feel he's gone walkabout in the Outback.

Thierry Henry explains the kind of FC Barcelona which Gordon Strachan and company need to unravel and why Iniesta is used so defensively.

"If you look at all our results since losing at home to Real Madrid before Christmas then we may not be scoring lots of goals but we've become much harder to beat," contends the Frenchman. "Madrid are going very strongly and it was like kissing goodbye to six points losing to them at the Camp Nou.

"But the reaction is that we are defending more as a team, working to close down the opposition in midfield and we are getting good away points such as drawing 0-0 at San Mames (Athletic Bilbao's ground) and coming away from a hard night in Sevilla with a 1-1 draw."

So if 23-year-old Iniesta isn't planted on one of the two wingers' positions in Glasgow he'll be badgering away in midfield and it's a wager that a fair few fans in green and white will wistfully imagine the Spaniard in a Celtic strip twisting this way, turning that, all the while evoking a mix of memories of players like Johnny Doyle, Davie Provan, Jimmy Johnstone, Tommy Burns and their ilk.

However Iniesta accepts that, just as at Ibrox in Barcelona's group match earlier in the season, pragmatism will rule very strongly over entertainment.

"Just like most fans prefer to see me in my more offensive position, the majority of people either believe or demand that Barca should win by two or three goals in every single match although that's not feasible.

"When we were in Glasgow earlier this season all we demonstrated is the fact that in the Champions League its utterly vital not to lose away from home.

"It's good to show ambition and at Ibrox we tried to score, just like we will at Celtic, but when things didn't come off we headed back to Spain with a point and an unbeaten record, which is the type of attitude that ends up winning you trophies."