By Callum Fraser 
Liverpool’s greatest team was built by a Scot, captained by a Scot, and had a Scot as its finest player. That is not a piece of Scottish exaggeration; it is the 1989 to 1991 side of Kenny Dalglish, Alan Hansen and, in the seasons before, Graeme Souness, and it is the team whose shirt Liverpool have chosen to revive for 2026/27. The Liverpool jersey has a Scottish thread running through it from the day Bill Shankly arrived in 1959 to the day Andy Robertson lifted the Premier League trophy in 2025, and this is an attempt to follow it.
Shankly: the man who made it all red
Bill Shankly came from Glenbuck, a mining village in Ayrshire that produced fifty professional footballers and no longer exists. He took over a Second Division Liverpool in December 1959 and built the modern club: the Boot Room, the training ground at Melwood, the “This Is Anfield” sign and, in November 1964, the all-red kit. Shankly had the team wear red shorts against Anderlecht, decided the effect made his players look bigger, and never went back. Every Liverpool shirt since has been worn with red shorts because of a decision made by a Scot.
Yeats and St John
Shankly’s first great signings were both Scottish. Ron Yeats, a centre-half from Aberdeen, was introduced to the press with the instruction to “walk round him”, and captained the side to the 1964 title and the 1965 FA Cup, the first in the club’s history. Ian St John, from Motherwell, scored the winner in that final. Both wore the plain red shirt of the 1960s, the design that started the tradition.
Dalglish: the greatest
Kenny Dalglish arrived from Celtic in August 1977 for £440,000, a British record, to replace Kevin Keegan, and within nine months had scored the winning goal in the European Cup final at Wembley. He won three European Cups and six league titles as a player, took over as player-manager in 1985 and won the Double in his first season, and led the 1989/90 title winners in the geometric adidas shirt. He resigned in 1991, returned to manage the club in 2011 and won the League Cup in 2012. There is a stand named after him at Anfield; for Liverpool supporters he is simply the King.
Souness and Hansen
Graeme Souness, from Edinburgh, was the midfield of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and captained the side that won the 1984 European Cup in Rome. Alan Hansen, from Alloa, played 620 matches over fourteen seasons, won eight league titles and captained the 1986 Double winners; he was the defender of the 1989 to 1991 team and has appeared, as he was then, in the launch campaign for the 2026/27 shirt. Steve Nicol and Gary Gillespie completed a Scottish contingent that, at its peak, provided a third of the first team.
Robertson: the modern link
Andy Robertson’s route to Liverpool ran through Queen’s Park, Dundee United and Hull City, where he was bought for £8 million in 2017. He has since played more than 300 matches, won the Champions League in 2019, the Premier League in 2020 and 2025 and every domestic trophy, and captained Scotland at two European Championships and, this summer, at Scotland’s first World Cup in 28 years. He wears the number 26.
Scotland’s summer
That World Cup ended early. Scotland beat Haiti 1-0 through John McGinn, lost narrowly to Morocco and were beaten 3-0 by Brazil, finishing third in Group C with three points, and their elimination was confirmed when Croatia beat Ghana in Philadelphia. Steve Clarke resigned shortly afterwards. Robertson, at 32, went back to Liverpool for a season in which the club’s shirt is a tribute to the last great Scottish era at Anfield.
The 2026/27 jersey
adidas’s home shirt for the season revives the geometric pattern of the 1989 to 1991 kit on a deep red base, with white detailing on the crest, the three stripes and the trims. The original was worn by Dalglish’s champions of 1990, with Hansen at the back, Rush and Barnes in front of him, and a “97” sits inside the collar for the victims of Hillsborough. The launch used images of Hansen and his team-mates as they were in 1989 alongside Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike in the new design. It costs £85 and it is, in short, a Scottish shirt.
Nicol and the 1980s
Steve Nicol, from Irvine, joined from Ayr United in 1981 and spent fourteen seasons at the club, playing in every position except goalkeeper and winning four league titles, the 1984 European Cup and three FA Cups. He was the Football Writers’ Footballer of the Year in 1989, the only Liverpool full-back to have won the award, and the 1989 to 1991 shirt was worn by him as much as by Hansen and Dalglish. He later spent a decade coaching in the United States, where he took New England Revolution to four MLS Cup finals, and remains a regular voice on the club in American broadcasting.
Souness the manager
Souness returned to Anfield as manager in 1991, succeeding Dalglish, and won the 1992 FA Cup, but his three seasons were marked by ill-judged sales, the end of the Boot Room and an interview with a newspaper Merseyside had boycotted since Hillsborough, for which he apologised and which supporters have not forgotten. It is the one Scottish chapter in the club’s history that nobody at Anfield tells fondly, and it stands as a reminder that the thread runs through failure as well as success.
Robertson’s Liverpool numbers
Robertson’s trophy list is the longest of any Scot in the club’s history except Dalglish: a Champions League, two Premier League titles, an FA Cup, two League Cups, a Club World Cup and a Super Cup. His assists from left-back in the Klopp years made the 26 a number that supporters ask for at the club shop, which no Liverpool full-back’s number had been before.
The thread
Count the trophies. Shankly’s three titles and two FA Cups. Dalglish’s three European Cups as a player and three titles as a manager. Souness’s captaincy in Rome. Hansen’s eight championships. Robertson’s Champions League and two Premier Leagues. The red shirt has been worn by Englishmen, Welshmen, Egyptians, Dutchmen and Brazilians, but at almost every decisive moment in its history there has been a Scot in it, or a Scot picking the team. The 2026/27 kit is an admission, in fabric, that the club knows it. For more on the Scots making their mark in the Premier League and beyond, explore Scots Abroad Pod.