Scottish Record Holders in European Football
This week Andy Robertson topped the Scottish Champions League appearances list. Or did he?
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Now, a return to some stats!
LIVERPOOL’S RECORD HOLDER
Liverpool’s social media team this week celebrated Andy Robertson becoming the Scottish player with the most Champions League appearances. A fantastic achievement for our national team captain - who has proven several times this season that Liverpool look a better side with him in it.
That record, however, comes with important caveats. It excludes qualifying matches and disregards all European Cup football played before 1992. Although I will frequently share statistics specific to the Champions League era or the SPFL era, I much prefer when a stat is a proper “all-time” stat. With that in mind, it is worth examining where Robertson actually ranks when all matches in all iterations of Europe’s premier club competition are included.
EXCLUSION OF QUALIFIERS
Firstly, in the Champions League era (since 1992/93) Manchester United’s Darren Fletcher is actually the English-based Scot with the most appearances - when qualifiers are included.
While Robertson’s 63 UCL appearances moved him one clear of Fletcher’s 62, Fletcher actually made a total of 66 Champions League appearances - including qualifiers against Dinamo Bucureşti in 2004, and Debrecen in 2005. Since then, UEFA’s access list has increasingly favoured the big four or five leagues, reducing the qualifiers they must play. Manchester United haven’t played a Champions League qualifier since 2005; while Andy Robertson has never played one!
As I am a Scottish football fan who has to watch Scottish teams make an arse of European qualifiers every summer, I dislike stats that disregard qualifiers as meaningless! They are often some of the most meaningful games of the European season. On a similar note, a stick that is often used to beat Celtic is their poor European away record - no team has lost more European away matches than the Celts this century. But lots of these matches include qualifiers….
If qualifiers are considered valid when assessing negative records, then I think they should also count when compiling “all-time” appearance and goals totals. When we expand the criteria to include qualifiers, several Scottish players move ahead of both Robertson and Fletcher in the Scottish all-time appearances list.
All of the following tables include appearances and goals scored in all matches - including qualifiers.
This article delves into the history of Scottish players in UEFA competition, including the exploits of Ally McCoist, Billy McNeill, Kenny Dalglish and more.
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CHAMPIONS LEAGUE REBRAND
As most fans will be aware, the European Champion Clubs’ Cup (more commonly known as the European Cup) was rebranded as the Champions League in 1992. The ‘big ears’ design of the trophy - first introduced in Celtic’s title winning 1967 campaign - remained the same, and indeed it is still engraved with the French “Coupe des Clubs Champions Européens”.
The current trophy is actually on to its sixth copy, as there was a rule (until 2009) that any team winning the trophy for a fifth time, or three times in a row, was permitted to keep it and a replacement would be manufactured. (The five teams to keep the trophy were Real Madrid (1966), Ajax (1973), Bayern Munich (1976), AC Milan (1994), Liverpool (2005)).
However, the top tier of European competition did not start with the rebrand in 1992, and indeed Scottish players in European football have a rich history prior to 1992. When the stats are amended to include the European Cup as well as qualifiers, Robbo falls further down the list still:
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