Quiet man Pickford is making a big noise
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-thematch display against Sweden. The 24-year-old, who made three outstanding saves to deter Marcus Berg and Viktor Claessen, emerged with his left hand bandaged up and admitted that he had struck his knee when intending to hit the turf.
‘It was a daft injury,’ 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?’
Pickford followed up his matchwinning display in the penalty shoot-out against Colombia with a performance that made him the centre of global attention.
One French journalist suggested: ‘You’re spoiling the pleasure of the people who like to make jokes against English ‘keepers. What do you say?’ Pickford replied: ‘Good question, yeah!’
The 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 goalkeeper and that he might struggle to
reach the ball at times.
One of the saves to deter Berg saw Pickford drop to claw away a ball knocked down onto his goalline, resonant of England’s Gordon Banks as he kept out Pele in Mexico, 48 years ago. Pickford said he was familiar with that save.
‘It’s good (being compared to Banks or Peter Shilton),’ he said. ‘As long as you are set and in right position you give yourself the best opportunity. It’s about the timing of a save and 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.’
His performance prompted a considered assessment of the goalkeeper’s qualities from manager Gareth Southgate.
‘Pickford is the sort of prototype of what a modern goalkeeper should be,’ said the manager. ‘The number of touches you have with your feet is high in the modern game, especially international and European football.
‘The Premier League is different, with crosses into the box, so different skills. But the saves he made at critical times, and his distribution picking out Trippier with a reverse pass, we need goalies like that moving forward.’
It was a long way from 2016, when 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”.’
He had words to offer last night. Pickford’s discussion of the match made it clear England had made the same meticulous preparations for the Swedish attacking threat that 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 it,’ he said. ‘We have a terrific defence but if they get ahead of ours I have to be ready.’
His man-of-the-match award was comfortably the best of his career. ‘It will have to go on my mantlepiece, that one,’ he said.
Pickford insisted England could go beyond Wednesday’s semi-final and that there was more to come from this young side.
‘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 stepby-step, 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 and train before Wednesday.’
The Pickford family — his parents, fiancee and brother — as well as a friend, are here in Russia, with more arriving on Wednesday. He said this had been one of the best days of his life.
‘We knew we’d 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 to have 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-outs every game.
‘We work hard and push each other in training but we also have a laugh. We feel relaxed.’
We are a young side but we are a really experienced young side