The good news about Liverpool Football Club is that the club has enjoyed huge amounts of success over countless eras. For us supporters, that has meant the chance for virtually every generation of fan to get out and cheer on the Reds in a cup final or league winning campaign.
For the players, meanwhile, it has presented them with the opportunity to win numerous medals in the likes of the First Division, the Champions League, the UEFA Cup and the Premier League. Whilst there have been some fallow periods, many seasons have involved at least some sort of silverware with the associated medal for the players.
Here is a look at the top ten players who have won the most winner’s medals in the club’s history:
| Player | Medals Won |
|---|---|
| Alan Hansen | 25 |
| Phil Neal | 24 |
| Phil Thompson | 23 |
| Kenny Dalglish | 20 |
| Ian Rush | 20 |
| Ronnie Whelan | 20 |
| Bruce Grobbelaar | 19 |
| Ian Callaghan | 19 |
| Ray Clemence | 18 |
| Emlyn Hughes | 13 |
The point about this is it is winner’s medals. Yes, there are usually medals given to people when they lose in a cup final, but we’re studiously ignoring them because it’s a bit sad to think about it. It’s also important to point out that really we’re talking about which players won the most trophies, given not all competitions will have seen them pick up a literal medal, but telling which ones did and which ones didn’t will be all but impossible.
It is also important to point out that this list might not be entirely accurate, given the paucity of the information available.
Alan Hansen – 25 Winner’s Medals
In some ways, Alan Hansen was extremely lucky to even make it as a footballer, let alone go on to become the successful one that he did. The Scot ran into a plate-glass window when he was 15, getting a huge scar on his head as a result. He was also significantly more interested in golf than he ever was in football. In the end, though, he decided to join his bother John at Partick Thistle, making a name for himself as a talented defender.
Watched closely by Bob Paisley’s Liverpool, he was eventually signed by the club for £100,000, making his debut in a 1-0 win over Derby County at Anfield thanks to a Terry McDermott goal.
@verocalcio Liverpool goals’)#liverpoolfc #lfc #ynwa #jock #hansen #vero #calcio #lfc #Liverpool #goal #centre #back #ynwa #retro #ynwa🔴🔴🔴 #ynwaliverpool #lfcfans #lfcfamily #liverpool
As was often the case, Hansen’s introduction to the first time was gradual, but over the years he made himself a crucial part of one of the most successful sides ever to play to the game. By 1981 he’d won the European Cup twice, which is more than most teams ever get to do in their history, let alone individual players.
Whether you would consider the Charity Shield to be a competition we should consider here or count the Football League Super Cup as one will be a matter of personal opinion, but we have chosen to be completest over it and that means that Hansen sits just one above Phil Neal on 25 winner’s medals.
Honours: 8 First Division Titles, 6 Charity Shields, 4 League Cups, 3 European Cups, 2 FA Cups, 1 UEFA Super Cup, 1 Football League Super Cup
Phil Neal – 24 Winner’s Medals
Some might argue that Phil Neal only won 19 major trophies, given the fact that 5 of his 24 wins were in the Charity Shield. Even if you take them out, though, the 19 that he is left with are enough to see him close to the top of the list of all-time achievements in a Liverpool shirt.
You could look at the fact that he also holds the record for consecutive appearances, playing for Liverpool 417 times without missing a game, and imagine that is why he won so many medals. That, though, would be playing down the achievements of one of the club’s genuine all-time greats, with Neal winning two trophies during his first season in a Liverpool shirt.
47 years ago today, the Reds won their first European Cup in our 3-1 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach! 🏆
Terry McDermott ⚽️
Tommy Smith ⚽️
Phil Neal ⚽️pic.twitter.com/QPFdmaKHIl— Boss Liverpool Goals (@BossLFCgoals) May 25, 2024
During the 1975-1976 campaign, Neal was part of the team that won the First Division title as well as the UEFA Cup. Across the following eight seasons, he won another 23 tournaments. That included scoring the penalty that made it 3-1 to Liverpool as the Reds defeated Borussia Monchengladbach in 1977 as the club won the European Cup for the first time.
Fast-forward seven years and he won it again, scoring a penalty in the shootout against Roma that saw Liverpool become European champions for the fourth time, with Neal having been there for all of them. Not bad for a lad signed for £66,000 from Northampton Town.
Honours: 8 First Division Titles, 5 Charity Shields, 4 European Cups, 4 League Cups, 1 UEFA Cup, 1 Super Cup, 1 Football League Super Cup
Phil Thompson – 23 Winner’s Medals
One of the best things about Liverpool Football Club is the number of phenomenal players that were born in the city before coming through the ranks to become one of the best players ever. Phil Thompson is a great example of that, having come just shy of Phil Neal in terms of honours won if you include the Charity Shield for both men.
Having been born in Kirkby, Thompson stood on the Kop as a boy and then saw his dreams come true when he signed as a professional having just turned 17. If that wasn’t enough, the kid playing for his local team would go on to achieve a medal haul that virtually anyone in the sport would be jealous of.
His debut came at Old Trafford in a game that Liverpool won 3-0, scoring the third just a few minutes after an 18-year-old Phil Thompson had replaced John Toshack. When the Reds played Newcastle United in the FA Cup final in 1974, Malcolm Macdonald spent the buildup talking about all of the things he was going to do to Liverpool, only for Thompson to mark him out of the game in a 3-0 win.
After retiring as a player he returned to Anfield as a coach and helped Gerard Houllier’s Liverpool side win a treble, but that was just a drop in the ocean compared the number of trophies that he won as a player during a stellar career.
Honours: 7 First Division Titles, 6 Charity Shields, 3 European Cups, 3 League Cups, 1 FA Cup, 2 UEFA Cups, 1 Super Cup
Kenny Dalglish – 20 Winner’s Medals
Whenever anyone talks about Kenny Dalglish and his relationship to Liverpool, the sheer volume of things that he has done for the club over the years will be high on the list. He will always be rightly lauded for the manner in which he helped the families of the victims of the Hillsborough Disaster in the weeks, months and years that followed that tragic day.
In the end, the extend to which he took on the weight of the entire football club became too much and led to his decision to leave well before he should have. He will also be praised for coming back to the club in order to rescue us from the dreadful Roy Hodgson regime.
@liverpoolfc_fan4 King Kenny 👑 #liverpool #dalglish #football
Yet the credit he gets for all of his other influences over the club mean that it is sometimes forgotten just how exceptional a player he was. One of the best ever produced by the British Isles, ‘King’ Kenny was voted as the top player in the poll ‘100 Players Who Shook the Kop’. The Reds paid a British transfer record £440,000 to sign him from Celtic and he was worth every penny, winning every trophy there was to win as a player and then doing it again as a manager.
There is perhaps no greater praise you could given him than to point out that he was signed to replace Kevin Keegan and soon overtook him in the hearts of supporters.
Honours: 6 First Division Titles, 5 Charity Shields, 4 League Cups, 3 European Cups,1 UEFA Super Cup, 1 FA Cup
Ian Rush – 20 Winner’s Medals
There is barely a list about Liverpool Football Club and its history that won’t include Ian Rush on it. The prolific striker started off slowly before going on to become the top goalscorer the Reds had ever seen, so it is hardly surprising that he also won a good few trophies along the way.
As with Phil Neal, we should point out that three of his trophies were Charity Shields, back in the days when it was called that because it actually resulted in some money being given to charities. It is difficult to think of it now, but Rush played for the club at a time when it seemed to win the top-flight title every other year if it was unlucky.
He even managed to head off to Juventus for a year, come back to Anfield and then win another few trophies before he chose to hang up his boots altogether. In some ways, we should all thank our lucky stars that things didn’t work out differently.
Manchester United had shown an interest in him whilst he’d actually grown up as an Everton supporter, so imagine a world in which Rush had won all of those trophies with either of those teams instead. A hat tip to Geoff Twentyman, then, for recommending him to the board in his role as Chief Scout and encouraging the £300,000 move to bring him in from Chester City.
Honours: 5 First Division Titles, 5 League Cups, 4 Charity Shields, 3 FA Cups, 2 European Cups, 1 Football League Super Cup
Ronnie Whelan – 20 Winner’s Medals
If you’re going to talk about something like winner’s medals, there will always be some debate around what actually counts in terms of trophies won. We have already covered the fact that we’re not talking specifically about the medals that they get to take home and more about well-known trophies. With that in mind, there will be plenty who feel that the Dubai Super Cup shouldn’t really be counted.
If you’re on that list then you can consider Ronnie Whelan’s trophy haul to be 19 instead of 20. That, though, is still more than good enough to warrant a huge heap of praise, putting him on this list next to Bruce Grobbelaar.
1986 FA Cup Final: Ronnie Whelan @LFC pic.twitter.com/X9BlYOzhBC
— Firmino (@brazilegend10) July 25, 2024
He is also very much deserving of being on this list, being an integral part of a Liverpool side that absolutely dominated football in the 1980s. Part of the reason why the relatively unassuming man was able to be so crucial was that the Irishman was able to play as both a midfielder and defender depending on what it was that the club needed from him at the time.
He nearly played for Manchester United, having had an unsuccessful trial there, but their loss was very much Liverpool’s game. Signed for just £35,000 by Bob Paisley in 1979, he effectively ended Ray Kennedy’s career with the Reds when he took over from him.
Honours: 6 First Division Titles, 5 Charity Shields, 3 FA Cups, 3 League Cups, 1 European Cup, 1 Football League Super Cup, 1 Dubai Super Cup
Bruce Grobbelaar – 19 Winner’s Medals
Born in South Africa, Bruce Grobbelaar grew up in what is nowadays known as Zimbabwe. He served in the Rhodesian Army and played for local clubs prior to joining the Vancouver Whitecaps and playing in what was the North American Soccer League.
He enjoyed a loan move to Crewe, which is where Liverpool first caught sight of him and began the process of scouting him. The loan move was over by the time that scouting process was complete, but the Reds. Had seen enough to spend £250,000 bringing him over to England. He came in as a reserve goalkeeper but got his chance when Ray Clemence left for Tottenham Hotspur.
@retrobalon Bruce Grobbelaar 🧤 #futbol #goalkeeper
It was a chance that he grasped with both hands, even if his goalkeeping displays were strewn with errors during the early years. In the March of 1982 there was a battle of the goalkeepers, with Clemence in goal for Spurs and Grobbelaar keeping net for Liverpool as the teams went head-to-head in the League Cup. Liverpool won 3-1.
The South African had a flamboyant style, most famously displayed when the Reds defeated Roma in a penalty shootout in the European Cup final, with Grobbelaar doing ‘spaghetti legs’ to put their players off. The fact that he was retained by Paisley, Fagan and Dalglish tells you just how good he was.
Honours: 6 First Division Titles, 5 Charity Shields, 3 FA Cups, 3 League Cups, 1 European Cup, 1 Football League Super Cup
Ian Callaghan – 19 Winner’s Medals
When a player sets the record for the number of appearances for a club like Liverpool, you can bet that they’re going to have won their fair share of tournaments over the years. In the case of Ian Callaghan, known as ‘Cally’ to the Kop, he sits proudly at the top of Liverpool’s all-time appearance list. You can read about that elsewhere, but given the fact that managed more than 100 appearances more than Jamie Carragher in second, you can bet that he isn’t going to be removed from that top spot any time soon.
Born in the Liverpool district of Toxteth, Cally broke into the team just after the arrival of Bill Shankly as manager.
Quite whether the Second Division title should be included in a list of honours as far as our winner’s medals piece is concerned joins the likes of the Dubai Cup and the Charity Shield as a matter to be debated. We are including it, though it is arguably the lowest of the things that Callaghan won in terms of importance.
If Shankly were around today then he’d tell you that the FA Cup might well be the most important, given that when the Reds won it in 1965 it was the first time that had done so in the club’s history. It came a year after winning the First Division, but Liverpool had won that before so it didn’t have the same appeal to some.
Honours: 6 Charity Shields, 5 First Division Titles, 2 FA Cups, 2 European Cups, 2 UEFA Cups, 1 UEFA Super Cup, 1 Second Division Title
Ray Clemence – 18 Winner’s Medals
If you’re going to be a successful football club then you need to ensure that you’ve got one of the best goalkeepers protecting your net. In Ray Clemence, Liverpool had one of the best there’s ever been, who was also selected for England and would go on to win the UEFA Cup and an FA Cup with Tottenham Hotspur after he left Anfield.
Before then, though, he arrived on Merseyside after the club paid Scunthorpe United £18,000 for his signature. As a sign of things to come, he kept a clean sheet in his first performance, which was a League Cup third round game against Swansea Town in a match that the Reds won 2-0.
Ray Clemence brilliant save vs Manchester City at Maine Road 1977. #LFC pic.twitter.com/lg0puwK1Fj
— Davolaa (@Davolaar) July 9, 2024
Over the two years that followed, Liverpool did what they usually did back then and nurtured him through the reserves, eventually promoting him to the first team. Doing so would prove to be a masterstroke, with Clemence proving time and time again that he was an unbelievable shot stopper.
In the UEFA Cup final in 1971, for example, he saved a penalty that ultimately handed Liverpool the win. That happened on so many occasions it is all but impossible to name them all, but it’s fair to say that the Reds wouldn’t have the trophy cabinet that they to if it weren’t for the goalkeeper brilliance of Ray Clemence giving the defence such confidence.
Honours: 5 First Division Titles, 5 Charity Shields, 3 European Cups, 2 UEFA Cups, 1 FA Cup, 1 League Cup, 1 UEFA Super Cup
Emlyn Hughes – 13 Winner’s Medals
Born in Barrow-in-Furness, Emlyn Hughes’s father was a Workington Town rugby player, so he might’ve been expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. When he was turned town for a trial by his local side, he joined Blackpool in the First Division and was scouted by the Reds after playing for them just 28 times. Liverpool decided to pay £65,000 for him, with Bill Shankly giving him his debut in a 2-1 win over Stoke City in the March of 1967.
Initially being unsettled, he eventually earned his place in the first team and was given the nickname ‘Crazy Horse‘ after he stopped Newcastle’s Albert Bennett with an illegal rugby tackle.
Shankly might’ve been forgiven for being a bit sceptical when the Reds didn’t win any silverware during Hughes’s first four seasons at the club, but the famous manager had plans to put him front and centre of the future at Anfield. When the Scot decided to cull a load of the older players that had previously brought him success, he surrounding Hughes with the likes of Ian Callaghan and Tommy Smith and Liverpool would go on to be one of the most dominant sides in the country throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Hughes was at the centre of that until he left the club in 1979 for Wolverhampton Wanderers, winning the League Cup with them.
Honours: 4 First Division Titles, 3 Charity Shields, 2 European Cups, 2 UEFA Cups, 1 FA Cup, 1 UEFA Super Cup
