Gordon is still proud of greatest ever save
THE Stadium of Light was where Craig Gordon made the greatest ever save in English Premier League history. Accolades for a goalkeeper don’t come much higher.
It therefore says it all about his injury woes in a Sunderland shirt that he still left the place feeling they hadn’t seen him at his best. Bittersweet memories will be conjured by today’s return.
Celtic are on Wearside to take part in a friendly which marks the 20th anniversary of the ground. Gordon can lay claim to have provided one of the finest moments of individual brilliance witnessed across those two decades.
A game with Bolton Wanderers in 2010 provided the setting. From a corner kick, Zat Knight sticks out a leg to forcefully connect with a loose ball barely three yards out. The look of disbelief on the defender’s face tells the story of what happened next.
Two years later, a poll of more than 300,000 fans placed Gordon’s incredible reflexes ahead of saves by Peter Schmeichel and Jussi Jaaskelainen as the finest seen since the formation of the modern top flight in 1992.
‘We actually won that game 1-0, so it was important in terms of points and staying in the league,’ recalled Gordon.
‘It gives added significance to a save when you go on and win the game. I would be hard pushed to make a better one in the remainder of my career.
‘I don’t really quite know how I managed to do it. It was just a reaction. I managed to get my left hand to it. It was just the way I connected with the ball.
‘I managed to spin it up and over the bar from right underneath the crossbar.
‘I have a trophy for it. The list of guys who were nominated for it and some of the saves were just brilliant.
‘To come out on top of that was amazing. The names were renowned around the world.
‘It is a really good achievement and one that I hope I will hang onto for a while. There have been some good saves since then, so if they try to have another vote there will be a bit more competition. It was really special at the time.’
Gordon’s £9million move from Hearts to Sunderland in 2007 was the highest fee a British club had paid for a goalkeeper at the time. In his autobiography, Roy Keane claims the Scot was applauded off the field after his first Sunderland training session. ‘That is fairly accurate,’ smiled Gordon. ‘I did have a good first training session. I was right up for it to show my new team-mates that as the big-money signing I was there to help the team.
‘I made a lot of saves. Dwight Yorke was one of the ones leading the applause when we left the training field which was quite nice, considering where he had played and the career that he had had up until that point.
‘So, yes, it was a nice feeling. We went out the next day and beat Tottenham 1-0 on my debut. It was a good start.’
Injuries soon intervened, making a consistent run in the team elusive. Gordon had made 88 league starts by the time he left Wearside in 2012, beginning two years out of the game fighting to recover from a knee problem.
‘I have a few good memories,’ he reflected.
‘In the first year we stayed up which was a massive achievement with the squad that we had.
‘There was a real togetherness. We dug it out and got enough results to stay in the league and set the platform for the club to go on and stay there for 10 years.
‘We had some big wins and a lot of late goals that season.
‘We kept going right to the end and scraped enough points to stay in the league.
‘There were a few good results along the way at different times against some big clubs. Those one-off occasions are happy memories. Overall, it was blighted by my injury record at that time.
‘It was just disappointing that I never got a really long run to show what I could do for an extended period of time. They saw flashes of it, but I never really had an extended stay in the team.’