Mo: Wizard of Kansas City (MatthewStockman/Allsport)

The Major League Soccer exile's contemporary knowledge of Scottish football may be understandably sketchy but it has not escaped his attention that his former Scotland and Ibrox team-mate is within two games of retirement day.

After all, Johnston explains, there is a crate of champagne riding on a long-standing wager on who would be the last man standing.

Mo is certain to uncork those magnums. He reversed a decision to quit at the end of last season and will continue playing for another year with Kansas City Wizards in his adopted homeland.

But, while Kilmarnock veteran McCoist prepares for a final, emotional farewell to Ibrox as the curtain falls on his senior career, Johnston doesn't mind admitting there is one battle he preferred to walk away from.

'When I signed for Everton, one of the reasons was that I didn't want to be responsible in some way for forcing Ally out of a club he loved,' recalled Johnston last night of his transfer from Govan to Goodison in the autumn of 1991.

'Graeme Souness had already moved to Merseyside to take over at Liverpool a few months earlier and, with Graeme away, I felt the time was right to move, in any case.

'I was always a restless type who needed a new club every so often and I had already seen how Ally was hurting when Souness preferred Mark Hateley and me in the team.

'Ally and I had a good thing going in my first season with Rangers, when everything went the way I'd hoped. Ally being there was actually one of the reasons I signed because we already had a partnership with Scotland and I felt it would work well.

'It did, but then big Mark arrived and Graeme preferred him and me for a while. Ally had a hard time then and we spoke about it all the time, yet he came through that and went on to become an Ibrox legend.'

In fact, Johnston might not have been able to prevent Walter Smith pairing Hateley with McCoist as a priceless partnership but the friend-ships forged despite that three-into-two equation have endured time and the Atlantic Ocean.

He may idle away his afternoons playing ten pin bowling now, when not playing or coaching youngsters in Kansas, but tomorrow, Mo will let his mind drift to the thought of Ally taking a final bow at Ibrox.

'I don't think Rangers fans will miss the chance to salute him. I'm certain they will give him a standing ovation, in fact. Look at what he contributed over all those years. I'd say he has been the greatest Rangers player of the last 30 or 40 years - him and Goughie.

'Ally has the personality to be a success in whatever he does after football but, believe me, there is a tough streak behind that joker's mask. He was seen as happy-go-lucky but he could be dirty on the pitch if he had to be.

'It is that inner strength which has seen him through. He has had a broken leg twice, for goodness sake, and plenty of defenders will tell you they hated playing against him, as much for his competitive edge as his goalscoring threat.'

Johnston is the younger man by six months but the fact he is toning up his muscles for another season while McCoist and Gough hang up their boots would have been considered little short of astonishing had it been forecast 15 years ago.

He has even out-lasted Graham Taylor, his manager at Watford, who used to marvel about how the striker could 'burn the candle at both ends'. John Barnes was also Johnston's team-mate in the 1984 FA Cup Final.

Mo has taken up coaching now - when he isn't playing, or changing nappies for twin boys aged nine months. 'The club have been very good to me and asked me to come back. I said I'd coach kids and sit on the bench but it is turning out that I'm playing again.

'I did burn the candle at both ends when I was twenty-something but I never drank as much as people made out. I realised when in France that there was more to life than coming in to training with a hangover - and over here, they monitor your weight and diet all the time.'

He may be 'Champagne Charlie, Retired' but Johnston's enthusiasm bubbles over when talking of the football prospects in the States, with Claudio Reyna's team on course for the World Cup and talent coming through at youth level.

'Their Under-17s are brilliant. And the kids here at Wizards are growing up loving the game - we've 1,000 attached to the club already. I love it out here and so does the family. I don't see myself ever returning to Scotland.'

It almost sounds as if America might be the only country his twin boys will ever want to play for. It is complete fiction, though, to say their names are Mo and Ally...