Alan Pattullo
Published30th Mar 2026, 17:18 BST
A busy thoroughfare called Scotland – or “Scottie” - Road cuts through the north of the city, a team of ‘Macs’ representing Liverpool in the late 1890s and the likes of Graeme Sharp and Kenny Dalglish scoring goals to secure league and European titles for their respective clubs, Everton and Liverpool.
The city of Liverpool’s links with Scotland are long, strong and varied. They are already well established in the newest football temple in the city over and above the specially produced haggis and smoked bacon pizzas available in kiosks dotted around the Hill Dickinson stadium.
David Moyes, the current Everton manager, will attend Tuesday’s pre-World Cup friendly between Scotland and Ivory Coast. The African side have commandeered the ground as their temporary base although it’s the ‘visitors’ who ought to feel most at home having flown down from Glasgow on Monday afternoon.
Former Scotland defender Richard Gough chases down Arsenal's Dennis Bergkamp back in 1999.placeholder image
Former Scotland defender Richard Gough chases down Arsenal's Dennis Bergkamp back in 1999. | Getty Images
Moyes might even be watching Nathan Patterson skip up and down the right flank. This will be novel as he doesn’t seem particularly minded to play him when Everton is in action at the stadium.
The comments from Moyes put out by Everton on Monday to perhaps help swell ticket sales were a nod towards the feeling that when Scousers look to favour an international side, they turn towards places other than Wembley. “Scouse not English,” is a common refrain. “No doubt many of you will be here yourselves – hopefully cheering Scotland on,” noted Moyes, cheekily.
While some might see it as slightly corny, the curated stadium menu - which also includes "battered Mars bars with whisky custard" - simply continues the hospitality Liverpudlians have extended to Scots since the days when Everton played at Anfield, their home before Liverpool moved in. They are the city’s senior team. Scotland, writes James Corbett in the excellent Everton Encyclopedia, has always been one of the most potent talent sources for English clubs, “not least Everton”.
Indeed, he adds, “few clubs have benefited more from this southern emigration of players than Everton, and a tradition of Scots turning out in the blue of the club extends back to the very first years of its existence”. He reels off a list of names, including Alex Troup, Alex Young, Graeme Sharp, Duncan Ferguson and Richard Gough. All found a home in Liverpool. Some, indeed, still live in the area. Others, those buried in Anfield cemetery where many former players from both clubs reside, including several Scots, will be in situ forever.
Gough remembers Walter Smith selling him on the move to Everton. The centre half was already weighing up an offer to sign for West Ham United, where Harry Redknapp wanted him to play alongside Rio Ferdinand and help the youngster. Smith jumped in, emphasising to Gough that Liverpool is a football city like Glasgow. “‘You don’t want to go to London again, Goughie, you know what London’s like,” the legendary Rangers skipper, in a conversation with The Scotsman on Monday, recalled Smith telling him. “Walter said, ‘You’ll like Liverpool, it’s a proper football city. It’s like Glasgow’. He didn’t have to coax me.”
Gough had no regrets, playing his last game of senior football for the club against Bradford in 2001 at the age of 39. Graeme Sharp landed in Liverpool at a different stage of his career. Aged only 19, and with just a season or so behind him at Dumbarton, he was described as “an unknown” by the Liverpool Echo when he was signed by then manager Gordon Lee.
Sharp and Co should have won more Scotland caps
While he had to travel to Scotland for international games, eventually telling manager Andy Roxburgh only to pick him if he really needed him, now Scotland are coming to him. Well, near him. Sharp is based in north Wales, about a 40-minute drive away from the new stadium.
It is pleasing to report that despite recent issues stemming from a short spell on the board at Everton during Farhad Moshiri’s dysfunctional spell of ownership, Sharp is now watching Everton on a semi-regular basis once more. His son-in-law has a box at the new stadium, which makes things easier. Sharp attended the last couple of games at Goodison, despite previously saying he was dead set against returning as the Grand Old Lady’s end drew near.
“That episode will never go away for me and the feelings towards it will never go away,” he says. “My family said to me, you can try and move on. And I will.”
It’s now about looking to the future, for the club as well. “It is an important time for Everton,” Sharp says. “They have moved on. The venue they are in now they can host not just football matches, but rugby games, concerts, whatever. It is a different football club now, they have moved with the times eventually. They needed to get away from Goodison although it has many memories for everyone. Hopefully history can be made at the new stadium. Certainly Scottish fans coming down will enjoy it….52,000 , when it gets going, like against Chelsea recently, it’s a good stadium. The Euros are going there in 2028 and so they need to show they can hold events like this.”
Sharp’s paltry 12 caps between 1985 and 1988, when he was playing for arguably the best club side in Britain, attests not only to the quality of his peers, but also identifies a bias against so-called ‘Anglos’. “It is one of the tragedies of football that Ferguson, (Jimmy) Gabriel, (Andy) Gray, Sharp and (Alex) Young… earned less than ten Scotland caps while playing for Everton,” writes Corbett in the Everton Encyclopedia.
Despite the clocks change, Sharp took the notion to get up even earlier on Sunday morning to enjoy the highlights of Scotland’s last visit to Liverpool on Youtube. He was days away from turning 17 and still playing for Eastercraigs boys' club when he watched the controversial 1977 World Cup qualifying decider between Wales and Scotland from Anfield on television.
Graeme Sharp vies with Paul McGrath during an Everton v Manchester United match in 1985.placeholder image
Graeme Sharp vies with Paul McGrath during an Everton v Manchester United match in 1985. | Getty Images
“Watching it again, I thought: ‘Wow!’” he says. “Maybe it’s because you are older and you look differently at the players. But I saw Joe Jordan. I always thought he was just a typical big Scotland forward! But I watched him and thought, ‘Wow what a handful’. Don Masson too, and the Wales team, Mickey Thomas and Mike England. What a battle it was. Real proper players, a real proper team.”
The game against Wales was decisive for Scotland’s ambitions; a win was non-negotiable to reach Argentina. Tuesday’s game against Ivory Coast is far from pivotal on the road to North America, but it will help shape Clarke’s thinking.
The trip re-establishes the manager’s own links to the city having spent 18 months as assistant manager to Kenny Dalglish, whose gliding header from Martin Buchan’s cross sealed Scotland’s qualification for the World Cup in 1978. It was only the striker’s sixth competitive goal he had scored at the ground having signed for Liverpool from Celtic in the summer. It’s fair to say there were a few more, many of them similarly spectacular, to come.
“Liverpool is alive with the excitement the game has engendered,” wrote Peter May in The Scotsman on the morning of the match. He noted that the local evening paper devoted more column inches to the Wales v Scotland game than England’s World Cup qualifier against Luxembourg.
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All police leave was cancelled. As much as Liverpudlians seem to have always gone above and beyond when welcoming Scots to the city, there are limits. The first hint of any trouble had come when several coach loads of Scots arrived in the Anfield area and began knocking on doors trying to negotiate bed and breakfast rates with “irate residents”. Police were called and peace was restored.
No such scenes are expected on Tuesday – the Hill Dickinson is built far from housing on reclaimed land at Bramley-Moore Dock. It stands impressive though exposed, particularly on windy days like Monday. The Mersey flows nearby. On the horizon to the west, America awaits.