Picking a Liverpool all-time XI means leaving out players who'd walk into almost any other club's side. Rush. Carragher. Alisson. Keegan. Somebody good always misses out, and somebody reading this is going to be cross about it.
I've only counted what a player did in a Liverpool shirt. That rules out a few reputations made elsewhere, and it lets in a couple of lads who never got the credit they deserved outside Merseyside.
The XI
4-3-3. Souness sits and Gerrard gets forward. Callaghan covers the ground for both of them. Dalglish drops off the front line, which leaves room for Salah to come in off the right.
Goalkeeper
Ray Clemence (1967 to 1981). I went back and forth on Clemence and Alisson for longer than I'd like to admit. Alisson might well be the better keeper, and he's got a headed goal at West Brom in 2021 that Clemence can't match. What swings it for me is 1978-79. Liverpool conceded 16 league goals in 42 games that season. Sixteen. Add 470 league games and three European Cups and I'm going with the old boy, though I'm not fully at peace with it.
Defence
Phil Neal, right back (1974 to 1985). He's the only Liverpool player to play in all four of the club's European Cup finals between 1977 and 1984, and he scored in two of them. 455 league games, and hardly a season where he wasn't first choice.
Alan Hansen, centre back (1977 to 1991). Picture him taking the ball off a centre forward on the edge of his own box, then strolling it out to halfway like there was nobody near him. He did that for fourteen years and 434 league games, and he was captain when Liverpool won the double in 1986.
Virgil van Dijk, centre back (from 2018). Before he arrived in January 2018, Liverpool were a fun side who leaked goals. That May they were in a Champions League final. A year later they won it, then the league in 2020. He finished second to Messi for the 2019 Ballon d'Or and was captain when they won the title again in 2025. Nobody's leaving him out of a Klopp XI, and I'm not leaving him out of this one.
Andy Robertson, left back (from 2017). Signed from a Hull side that had just gone down, and within two seasons he had a European Cup winner's medal. Week in, week out, for the best part of a decade, he was up and down that left side with Mané or Díaz in front of him.
Midfield
Ian Callaghan (1960 to 1978). 857 games, 640 of them in the league. Nobody has played more for Liverpool. He started on the right wing under Shankly when the club were still in the Second Division and finished in the middle of Paisley's first European Cup winning side. Somewhere in between he went to the 1966 World Cup with England, and in 1974 the football writers named him Footballer of the Year.
Graeme Souness (1978 to 1984). He set up Dalglish's winner in the 1978 European Cup final, then captained the 1983-84 side to the league, the League Cup and the European Cup in the same season.
Steven Gerrard (1998 to 2015). 3-0 down at half-time in Istanbul, and it's Gerrard's header that starts it. A year later he hits that equaliser from 35 yards in stoppage time against West Ham in the FA Cup final. Souness and Gerrard in the same midfield is greedy, and it leaves the back four a bit exposed when both fancy a go. I'm keeping it. He never won the league, which still stings for a lot of Liverpool fans.
Attack
Mohamed Salah, right wing (from 2017). 32 Premier League goals in his first season, a record for a 38-game season at the time. He scored a penalty two minutes into the 2019 Champions League final. Then in the 2024-25 title season, at an age when most wide players are starting to fade, he got 29 more.
Kenny Dalglish, centre forward (1977 to 1990). Ian Rush scored 346 goals for Liverpool, more than anyone, and five of them came in FA Cup finals. If you're reading this and shouting at the screen, I understand. I've had Rush in and out of this team about six times. I keep coming back to Dalglish because he made the people around him better, and Rush is the best example. Plenty of those goals came with Kenny somewhere nearby, playing the pass a second before anyone else saw it. He also had big moments of his own. He chipped the winner in the 1978 European Cup final in his first season, after arriving to replace Keegan. In 1986, as player-manager, he scored at Stamford Bridge to win the league. In a 4-3-3 he'd play the role Firmino had under Klopp, dropping in and linking it all up, with more goals in him.
John Barnes, left wing (1987 to 1997). He won the league and Footballer of the Year in his first season, and the award again in 1990. For three or four years nobody in the country was more exciting to watch with the ball at his feet.
Manager
Bob Paisley. Six league titles and three European Cups in nine seasons.
Close but not quite
- Ian Rush (1980 to 1987, 1988 to 1996). The obvious one. Switch to a 4-4-2, put Rush up top with Dalglish just off him, and you've got the partnership that terrified the old First Division. Plenty of you would do exactly that, and I wouldn't argue too hard.
- Alisson Becker (from 2018). I'd probably pick Alisson in his prime over anyone. Clemence's 1978-79 is why he's in, and I'll change my mind next week.
- Trent Alexander-Arnold (2016 to 2025). That quick corner against Barcelona in 2019.
- Jamie Carragher (1996 to 2013) and Sami Hyypiä (1999 to 2009). Carragher played over 500 league games. Either one would have sat next to Hansen without anyone worrying.
- Alan Kennedy (1978 to 1985). Scored the winner in the 1981 European Cup final, then the winning penalty in Rome in 1984. Two finals decided by a left back.
- Roger Hunt (1958 to 1969). World Cup winner, 1966.
- Kevin Keegan (1971 to 1977). Two league titles and the 1977 European Cup before he left for Hamburg.
- Xabi Alonso (2004 to 2009). The passer this midfield doesn't quite have. I went with Callaghan's legs instead.
- Billy Liddell (1938 to 1961). The war and years in the Second Division took a lot of his best football, and the Kop still talk about him.
- Luis Suárez (2011 to 2014). 31 league goals in 2013-14.
- Ron Yeats, Tommy Smith and Emlyn Hughes. The spine of Shankly's side and the start of Paisley's. Hughes lifted the European Cup in 1977 and 1978.
- Bill Shankly, if you want him in the dugout instead. He took them out of the Second Division and built everything Paisley went on to win with. Klopp, who ended a thirty-year wait for the league, has a case too.
Build your own
Plenty of Kopites would rather have the 1977 Rome side, the 2005 Istanbul team or the 2019-20 champions on the wall than any all-time XI. If you want one of those, or your own version of this one with Rush in it, you can build it in our team builder, or have a look at the Liverpool prints we've already made.