The latest installment of David Preece's musings on EURO 2024 sees him make the case for Pickford being England's all time goalkeeping great - bar one…
Header image: via FourFourTwo
Back in the February of 2018, Jordan Pickford had just picked up Young Player of the Year at the North East Football Writers Awards. The 2018 World Cup in Russia was just around the corner and Pickford’s performances had pushed him into the frame to make England’s squad.
At that point, his senior England career had spanned a solitary 90 minutes the previous November in a goalless draw with Germany. It was a good way to begin in anyone’s book, but still a long way from starting a World Cup as England’s number one. Yet his future seemed inevitable.
I’d been following Jordan’s career since he was 16 and when the then goalkeeper coach at Sunderland, Adrian Tucker, brought Jordan over to the table I was sat at for a chat, the conversation lead to Russia.
As a fellow Mackem, I wanted nothing more for him to make the squad and told him just to make sure he did everything he could to ensure he was. To which he replied, “Then we’ll show them how to go on.”
Now, if you’re not familiar with the North-East vernacular, that roughly translates as ‘Then I’ll show them how good I am.”
To another person, this might come across as extremely cocky but how he delivered it was without an ounce of arrogance. What it actually said about him is exactly how we’ve come to know him in an England shirt.
Pickford is someone who relishes every moment, every challenge, every demand that comes with the job. When so many others have allowed the shirt to be more akin to a strait-jacket that inhibits performance almost to the point of paralysis, it makes you realise this is what we have been missing.
It wasn’t the misplaced confidence of the past. It was a true belief that was founded in something that can be easily buried beneath the weight of a nation's expectations and egos puffed by the Premier League hype.
It isn’t that Pickford copes with the pressure. He revels in it. It’s impossible to detect in him any of the cynicism that can seep in season by season, or the entitlement some feel after years inside the football bubble. Although there’s no doubt he has matured over the past six years, he simply loves what he does and that's reflected in his performances
And for all the analysis we could do on his game, him holding on to this part of his character has become one of England’s biggest strengths.
The perception of him by many is his intensity will inevitably cost England but the level of consistency he has shown for England belies that opinion and that is why he should be celebrated more than he currently is. And the reason he stays in control whilst others think he’s losing it is because that is 100% his personality.
What looks like chaos to some, is the zone he’s most comfortable operating in and we should all embrace that.
I won’t make the argument that that this makes him the most talented goalkeeper England has ever produced. The likes of Peter Shilton, Ray Clemence and David Seaman have the medals to back up their own claims to that title. But don’t undervalue what he has brought to the Gareth Southgate era of English football. In purely contribution to the England cause, surely only Gordon Banks can lie above him now?
Whether in qualification or competition, Jordan Pickford has not just been the model of consistency, he’s made the difference. Especially when it comes to penalty shootouts. The narrative around England’s past lack of success has always been focused on those who missed the penalties, but the data tells us that it’s the England goalkeepers failure to relieve the pressure from their teammates and give them the chance to win that is as much to blame.
Goalkeeper.com's Dr John Harrison notes that Pickford’s save success rate in shootouts is 26.3%. This is in comparison to the average of all previous England keepers being 6.5%, making his influence is undeniable.
Not only that, his save from Columbia’s Carlos Bacca at Russia 2018 helped begin the redefinition of England as a country that wilted under pressure from the spot.
Now, I’m fully aware it’s dangerous to lavish praise on someone before a huge game as a semi-final of the Euro’s. And especially on a goalkeeper. But whilst England’s performances between the first and last whistles may be a throwback to England sides of old, England’s current goalkeeper is different. And in my book, his different is good.
