Liverpool's Vital Dutch Masters

Liverpool have employed a steady stream of Dutch talent over the last quarter century. They have rarely won silverware without a player from the Netherlands.

There is a famous piece of trivia surrounding Liverpool Football Club. The second most successful English team in terms of league titles - who could draw level with Manchester United this season - have never won the crown without a Scottish player in their side.

Much was made of this when Andy Robertson signed for the Reds from Hull City in 2017. At that point it had been 27 years since Liverpool had been kings of England, but within three seasons the Premier League flag was flying over Anfield.

Correlation must be causation here, right? Hardly. If players from north of the border were as magical as that, Charlie Adam would’ve ended the title drought rather than playing for one of the worst Reds sides of the modern era.

As is often the case when getting an idea for the newsletter, this one was sparked by seeing a fact or statistic shared by the marvellous Michael Reid. He works for Opta, appears on LFCTV and has a Substack you should really check out.

Reid recently highlighted that Cody Gakpo had become the sixth Dutch player to make at least 100 appearances for Liverpool. Thanks to the presence of him, Ryan Gravenberch and Virgil van Dijk, there has been a flavour of the Netherlands at the club for a while. Pep Lijnders was assistant manager for a long time, before the arrival of Arne Slot intensified the Dutch influence further still.

Seeing that list of players set the mental cogs into action. While there have been occasional gaps, the Reds have been relying on players from the Netherlands since before the turn of the century.

Disregarding Great Britain and Ireland leaves only Spain, with 11, as the one country who have had more internationals who were playing for Liverpool than the Dutch (10). Have they been as important to the Reds as Scots? There haven’t been many trophies won without them in the last quarter century, as we shall see.