Pundits ridicule Pickford as abrasive and mouthy. But he’s an England great up there with Banks
AT this summer’s Euros, if all goes to plan, Jordan Pickford will become England’s fifth most-capped goalkeeper, overtaking Ray Clemence and with the mighty Gordon Banks in his sights.
But does the Everton No1 get even half the respect Clemence received for his sterling international service, let alone Banks? Far from it.
If Pickford plays in the upcoming friendlies against Brazil and Belgium, he will move on to 60 caps. Clemence won 61, Banks 73. That is illustrious company and the Wearsider deserves to keep it.
Since his impressive debut in November 2017 — a 0-0 draw with Germany — he hasn’t been merely reliable for England, he has been consistently excellent, some might even say superb.
No other player did more to get England to the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup or to the final of Euro 2020, in which he saved two penalties in the shootout against Italy. By then he had become the first goalkeeper in tournament history to keep five clean sheets in the first five games.
He was almost as good at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, making notable saves against the USA and Senegal. Before the quarter-final defeat by France, he kept three clean sheets in four games. Those are serious statistics.
Pickford should be lionised for the way he plays for the Three Lions. Any other country would cherish him. But here, he is routinely belittled by football writers and pundits who rarely find anything more positive to say than a grudging, ‘He’s never let England down’. Some of them are not even that magnanimous, suggesting he only has the job because there is nobody better.
It’s ill-informed nonsense. On social media, the Guardian’s
Barney Ronay recently said that only seven outfield players should be nailed-on starters at the Euros in Germany. And in goal? A dismissive shrug of a selection. ‘I guess Pickford,’ he wrote, showing the typical media condescension towards a man whose record should make him one of the first names on Gareth Southgate’s team sheet. Former players are no less jaundiced. For Graeme Souness he is a ‘bombscare’, which in truth might once have been so. But these days Pickford is more of a bomb disposal expert, getting club and country out of far more scrapes than he gets them into, not to mention his influence at the other end of the pitch. His quick thinking and accurate distribution, like his other virtues, rarely get as much attention as his infrequent errors. Another former player, Gary Neville, at least acknowledges he is worth his international place. But he damns with faint praise, suggesting the Everton man habitually ‘raises his game’ for England. This, too, is nonsense.
Any Evertonian who watches Pickford most weeks knows that both last season and the one before he pretty much singlehandedly steered the club clear of relegation. His penalty save from James Maddison at Leicester towards the end of last season was as vital to Everton’s survival as his spellbinding performance a year earlier in a precious win over Chelsea at Goodison Park.
He alone, it often seems, stands between the Toffees and the trapdoor. As for this season, only Arsenal’s David Raya has more shut-outs than Pickford’s eight. That is the same as Manchester City’s feted Ederson, even though Pickford plays for a team who are again malfunctioning.
There was no clean sheet in Everton’s last Premier League outing against Manchester United. But he was only beaten from the penalty spot and pulled off one save from Bruno Fernandes that was world class. Did he get any credit? Not really.
WHy is this? Why do respected observers repeatedly overlook the evidence of their own eyes and, like Souness, cling on to assessments made years ago?
Pickford turned 30 this month, which is generally regarded as a goalkeeper’s prime, but he continues to be defined by the impetuosity of his youth. Why?
For Paul Owens, a writer currently working on a history of Everton goalkeepers to be titled The Glovemen of Goodison, there are several reasons.
‘Opposition fans don’t like him because he’s mouthy and I don’t think the media like the fact that he celebrates saves the way strikers celebrate goals, though I think it’s great.
‘He’s considered bold, brash and abrasive, and they’ve taken against him for it. They hate it when he berates his backline the way Peter Schmeichel used to. I think a lot of them actually want him to fail and when he does make a mistake, they jump on him harder than anyone else.’
Owens also cites the notorious Virgil van Dijk tackle. In October 2020, in the Merseyside derby, Pickford came flying out of his goal and clattered Van Dijk, leaving the Liverpool defender in need of surgery. Bizarrely, referee Michael Oliver did not send him off. There was no malicious intent, but even most Everton fans knew that he deserved a red card for wildly reckless foul play.
The fall-out, in footballing terms, was nuclear. Pickford received furious censure in the media, as well as death threats from Liverpool fans. Could he ever redeem himself in the eyes of the disproportionate number of ex-Liverpool players who work as TV pundits? Evidently, not yet.
Nor have they forgotten another of his highest-profile blunders, in a Merseyside derby in December 2018, when he gifted Divock Origi a last-minute winner.
But that was then. Six years ago Pickford was a good goalkeeper, but undoubtedly prone to rash decision-making. In games against Newcastle he allowed his Sunderland background to inform his interaction with the Geordie fans, which was unwise at best.
That is all behind him now. Since 2018 he has calmed down, matured, married, become a father, worked ferociously hard with the Everton goalkeeping coach Alan Kelly, consulted a sports psychologist and gone from good to great.
If he does raise his game, it is in really significant fixtures, such as last season’s 0-0 draw with Liverpool, in which his eight saves made him man of the match.
His persistent critics rage that he doesn’t come off his line enough to collect crosses and that, in the football vernacular, he doesn’t ‘boss’ his area.
It is true that he is not a giant, like some of his counterparts. But he is tall enough and in that aspect of the game, good enough. Beyond that, he is far more than a quality shot-stopper. As fans who watch him week in, week out will attest, he is the full package.
Neville Southall, the greatest of all Pickford’s predecessors in the Everton goal, recognises that. It is high time everyone else did and stopped adhering to a narrative that is all the more boring for being years out of date.