BANK ON JORDAN

Super saves bring back memories of World Cup hero Banks

ENGLAND goalkeeper Jordan Pickford last night revealed that he injured his hand by accidentally hammering it against his knee in a moment of frustration during his man-of-the-match display against Sweden.

The 24-year-old, who made three outstanding saves to deter Marcus Berg, twice, and Viktor Claessen in the team’s 2-0 win, emerged with his left hand bandaged and admitted that he had struck his knee when intending to hit the turf.

‘It was a daft injury by myself,’ he said. ‘I went to punch the floor and ended up punching my knee and hurt my thumb. It was a bit of anger. But I’m a man, not a mouse. I’m fine and I’ll live another day, won’t I?’

The Everton goalkeeper followed up his matchwinning display in the penalty shoot-out against Colombia with a performance which last night made him the centre of global attention here. One French journalist suggested to him: ‘You are spoiling the pleasure of the people who like to make jokes against English ‘keepers. What do you say?

Pickford replied: ‘Good question yeah!’

That moment — and the entire match — brought further sweet vindication after Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois had suggested that Pickford was too short to be a top class keeper and that — at 1.85 metres or a little over six feet — he might struggle to reach the ball at times.

One of the saves to deter Berg saw Pickford drop to his left and claw away a ball knocked down towards his goalline — resonant of England’s Gordon Banks as he kept out a header from Brazil’s Pele in Guadalajara 48 years ago. Pickford said he was familar with that save.

‘It’s obviously good [being compared to Banks or Peter Shilton],’ he said. ‘As long as you are set and in the right position you give yourself the best opportunity.

‘It’s all about the crucial timing of a save but it’s also being in the right position at the right time. And that’s what we focus on.

‘We do about 600 saves a week just to make one save on a Saturday. That’s what it’s all about.’

His performance prompted a considered assessment of the goalkeeper’s qualities from manager Gareth Southgate in the aftermath of the win.

‘Pickford, for me, is the sort of prototype of what a modern goalkeeper should be,’ the manager said. ‘The number of touches you have with your feet is exceptionally high in the modern game, especially in international and European football. The Premier League is different, with crosses into the box, so different skills. But the saves he made today at critical times, and his distribution picking out Kieran Trippier with a reverse pass ... we need goalkeepers of that ilk moving forward.’

It was a very long way from the moment in 2016 when the then England captain, Wayne Rooney, took a surreptitious picture of Pickford, who was on the national team’s bus for the first time.

The image was sent to John O’Shea, a team-mate of the young goalkeeper at Sunderland.

Rooney wrote in the message, ‘Hasn’t said a word!’, yet he certainly had words to offer last night.

Pickford’s discussion of the match revealed that England had made the same meticulous preparations for the Swedish attacking threat as they had for the Colombian penalty takers last week.

‘We knew their threats and Seba’s (Larsson) delivery — they like to get balls in the box and get on the end of them,’ he said. ‘We have a terrific defence but if they get ahead of our players, I have to be ready.’

His man-of-the-match award was comfortably the best achievement of his young career, he insisted.

‘It’ll go on my mantelpiece, that one,’ he said.

Pickford insisted that England could go beyond Wednesday’s semifinal and that there was more to come from this group of players.

‘We are a young side but we’re an experienced young side, as daft as that sounds,’ he said. ‘We know how to work and play for each other, what our strengths are. We know how to win.

‘The gaffer always says step-bystep, game-by-game. The first thing was to get out of the group stage and then we had a tough opponent in Colombia, then another tough opponent in Sweden. We’ll now plan well and recover well and train well before Wednesday.’

The Pickford family — his parents, fiancee and brother — as well as one of his friends are now here in Russia, with more arriving on Wednesday. He said that yesterday had been one of the best days of his life.

‘We knew we would have to perform and bring our A game against a team difficult to break down,’ he said of the Swedish challenge. ‘It was a great performance but even better a clean sheet to take into the next game. It was a different type of game We don’t want to be going into a penalty shoot-out every game. We work hard and push each other in training but we also have a laugh. We feel relaxed.’