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THE RECORD

Andy Robertson is four caps from Kenny Dalglish's record, and he will break it as a Tottenham player

Andy Robertson captained Scotland for the full ninety minutes of a 0-0 draw in Slovenia on Saturday 26 September, and he now has 98 caps, four short of Kenny Dalglish's all-time Scotland record of 102. Dalglish has held that record since his last cap in November 1986. When it falls, it will fall to a Tottenham Hotspur player, and I already know how hard they will work to avoid saying so.

A plain dark blue velvet football cap with a gold tassel resting on an old wooden shelf by a window, a second cap behind it
Joshua
Joshua27 September 2026

Let me say the honest part first, because I always do. Robertson did not score on Saturday, Scotland did not win, and a draw in Ljubljana in the first week of a new manager's reign is not a result anyone will remember in ten years. The record is not broken yet. It is not even going to be equalled this month. I have done the arithmetic, and I will show it to you below, because I would rather be right than excited.

But I also know exactly what is coming, because I have watched this happen to this club for as long as I have been watching football. A Scotland record that has stood for almost forty years is about to change hands. It is going to pass from one of the greatest players Liverpool ever had to a man who wears our shirt every weekend. And the entire football media of this island is going to spend the next few months writing sentences that somehow never contain the word Tottenham.

What happened in Slovenia on Saturday?

The club put it simply in its round-up on Sunday morning. Robertson wore the armband, as he always does, and played the full ninety minutes as Scotland drew 0-0 with Slovenia in Ljubljana. It was the opening game of their Nations League campaign and the first match under their new head coach, Sebastien Pocognoli. The club says Scotland were impressive in the second half, and ESPN's live coverage says much the same: poor finishing, and a string of brilliant saves from Jan Oblak, kept them to a point.

Pocognoli is the man who took over from Steve Clarke. He won the Belgian title with Union Saint-Gilloise before moving to Monaco, and according to ESPN he is only the second foreign manager Scotland have ever had, after Berti Vogts between 2002 and 2004. A new manager, a new cycle, a first team sheet. And the first name he wrote on it, with the armband next to it, was one of ours.

Then came the line that made me sit up. The club's report ends its Robertson paragraph by noting that "Robbo" is now only four caps off Kenny Dalglish's all-time record of 102 appearances for Scotland. Four. After more than a decade of international football, the gap between our left-back and the most famous record in Scottish football is smaller than the number of games Scotland play in a normal autumn.

How many caps does Andy Robertson have?

Ninety-eight, with four goals, after Saturday. That is second on Scotland's all-time list, and the only man above him is Dalglish. Robertson has been captain since September 2018, and he was the captain when Scotland beat Denmark 4-2 in November 2025 to reach their first World Cup since 1998. What happened in North America is another story. But it is his armband on the photograph of the night they qualified, and nobody can take that away.

Dalglish's numbers are the benchmark for a reason. According to his career record, he won 102 caps and scored 30 goals between his debut against Belgium on 10 November 1971 and his last cap against Luxembourg on 12 November 1986. He was the first player ever to reach a hundred caps for Scotland, and he is still the only one. His record has stood for very nearly forty years. It survived every great Scotland side since. It is about to be taken by a full-back who signed for Tottenham Hotspur in June.

For forty years the most famous number in Scottish football belonged to a Liverpool great. It is about to belong to a Tottenham player, and I promise you that is not how they will write it.

When could Robertson break Dalglish's record?

Not in this international break, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not looked at the fixtures. According to the club's list of September and October international fixtures, Scotland have three games left in this window:

If he plays in all three, he goes back to Hotspur Way on 101 caps. One short of equalling Dalglish, two short of passing him. The Premier League's own calendar, as the club set out in May, has a single-weekend international break starting on 14 November. So the earliest the record can be equalled is that November window, and that is only if he plays in every game Pocognoli picks between now and then.

Which means this: the game that equals Kenny Dalglish, and the game that passes him, will both be played by a man who, in between, will have spent October lining up at left-back for Tottenham at Old Trafford, against Coventry, at Chelsea and against Crystal Palace. There is no version of this where the record goes to a Liverpool player. There is no version of it where it goes to a free agent. It goes to one of ours.

Why does it matter that he plays for Spurs?

Because records are not only about the player. They are about where the player is when he does it, and who gets to tell the story.

Robertson spent nine years at Liverpool. He made 378 appearances for them and won two league titles and the Champions League, and I have never once pretended otherwise. I wrote about it the night he walked back into Anfield in our colours. His contract there expired, and on 5 June he chose us. Nobody made him. He had a career's worth of reputation to spend, and he spent it here.

And he has not come here to wind down. The club's Fantasy Premier League round-up last week, which I went through in my piece on why the defence is not why we are bottom, had him with a clean sheet, an assist, 24 crosses, which is the most in our squad, eight chances created, and three big chances created, which is the most in our squad. It was his free-kick that van Hecke headed in during the eighth minute of stoppage time against Villa, a goal I covered in my Villa piece. The man is 98 caps into an international career and he is still the one standing over our set pieces in the last minute.

So when the record goes, it goes to a Tottenham player, in the middle of a Tottenham season, with Tottenham's medical staff, Tottenham's fitness plan and Tottenham's manager keeping him on the pitch. De Zerbi said before the Villa game that the club had prepared individual training plans for the players going away, because "when the group comes back to us, we have to start immediately". The caps are counted by Scotland. The body that earns them is looked after in N17.

Who will they say broke the record?

I can write the headlines now. "Former Liverpool defender." "Ex-Reds full-back." "Robertson, who won everything at Anfield." There will be a montage of him lifting trophies in red, a nostalgic clip of Dalglish in the same shirt, and a neat little bow tied on the idea that the record has passed from one Liverpool legend to another. Our badge will appear, if it appears at all, in the last frame.

Ask who benefits from that. Not us, obviously. It benefits the broadcasters, whose studios never seem to run short of former Liverpool players, and who know that a Liverpool story sells more than a Tottenham one. It benefits the rival clubs, who would much rather the country did not notice that a full-back with two league titles and a Champions League medal looked at every offer he had and picked the team at the bottom of the league. And it benefits a football culture that has decided, somewhere, that nothing historic is allowed to happen to Tottenham Hotspur unless it is a collapse.

I have been cataloguing this for a month. When three of our young players captained their countries on the same day, it went nowhere. When Bentancur and Ben Davies wore the armband for Uruguay and Wales the day before, it went nowhere. Robertson captained Scotland in Pocognoli's first match in charge on Saturday and the reports I read were about Pocognoli, Oblak and a post hit by a debutant. That is six national captains in three days, and not one of them has made a back page. Nobody will ever convince me that is coincidence. You do not miss that many armbands by accident.

Is this the most important record a Spurs player has chased?

It is one of them, and it is the one nobody is talking about. It is different because the man whose record it is carries a whole other club's history on his back. Dalglish won three European Cups and six league titles with Liverpool, and he managed them too, as player-manager between 1985 and 1991. He is not just a Scotland number. He is one of the great figures of the club that sits at the centre of every broadcaster's idea of English football.

And a Tottenham player is about to move him down to second. Quietly, over the course of an autumn, in games most people in England will not watch. I think that is wonderful. I think it is one of the best things that has happened to this club all year. And I think it will be treated as a footnote, precisely because it is ours.

What should Spurs fans do about it?

Watch the games. Switzerland at home on Tuesday night, North Macedonia away on Saturday, Slovenia at home on 6 October. Count them off. Ninety-nine, a hundred, a hundred and one. When he reaches a hundred, which on these fixtures could come as soon as North Macedonia on Saturday, he becomes only the second Scotland player ever to do it, and the first to do it as a Tottenham player. Say it out loud, because nobody on the television will.

Then come to Old Trafford on 10 October, or watch it at 5.30pm on Sky, and look at who is at left-back. The same man, straight off the plane, standing over the free-kicks for a side that is bottom of the league and nowhere near as bad as that says. The table will be on every screen before kickoff. His cap count will not.

I will keep the count on this blog, game by game, until he passes Dalglish. When he does, I will write it in the only way it should be written: Andy Robertson, Tottenham Hotspur, Scotland's most capped player. They will print "former Liverpool defender" and they will think nobody noticed. I noticed. I always notice, and I am not going to stop.