Jordan Pickford’s high-risk keeping is worth the gamble for England
Mark Bosnich was on TalkSport this week offering an expert dissection of exactly how Jordan Pickford had allowed a shot from Youri Tielemans to squirm through his hands into the Everton net on Wednesday night. “Pickford has a technical flaw,” Bosnich said. “He dives backwards.”
Now, I’m no expert. But … well. Of all the directions a goalkeeper might choose to dive, backwards does seem a poor choice, a basic misunderstanding of the physics, and one Pickford might come to regret as he repeatedly hurls himself into his own net over the course of the season.
For all that, and while other specialists may disagree, it’s not hard to see the point Bosnich is making. Pickford sees Tielemans’ shot late through the classic “forest of legs”. He pushes hard with his left foot, travelling backwards as well to his right, and thus increasing the distance travelled just enough to make him late reaching ground level.
This is, Bosnich is saying, a matter of timing and mechanics. Encouragingly, it sounds fixable too, like a fast bowler losing part of his action and needing a few long, gruelling sessions to rewire that wonky muscle memory.
Not that any of this will save Pickford from the familiar public excoriation, or silence the calls for England rethinks, Southgate-defenestrations and the rest.
Every part of human life, even goalkeeping preferences, must be tribalised into some aspect of the “culture wars”. So our own earnest, diligent Gareth will – thanks to some mild tactical conservatism and loyalty to an occasionally frustrating goalkeeper – be cast once again as kind of defensive Darth Vader, a boys-club loyalist, celebrity acolyte and tool of the deep state lizard-conspiracy.
It is true that there has often been a staidness to England selections. Wayne Rooney lingered on like an inherited mahogany sideboard nobody had the heart to leave in the street for the men with the lorries. Joe Hart is the second most-capped England goalkeeper, despite spending the last two-thirds of his career looking to recapture the promise of the first.
But this isn’t that. Pickford does deserve more patience. Firstly because England have little choice. There are five regular first-choice English goalies at the elite tier of men’s football. Of these five, Pickford and Alex McCarthy are the only ones at a club higher than 15th in the league. Allowing him to keep the shirt is at least understandable.
Secondly, Pickford is a gamble on talent. We know about his flaws. There is talk of his “excitability”. Two years ago he was third on the errors-leadingto-a-goal table. Last year he was second. This year top spot is surely up for grabs, with only Kepa ahead of him.
On the other hand Pickford also makes excellent saves. His “ceiling” is high. He has an extreme, gymnastic physicality. He feels like a tournament player, a shot at going for the stunning win over the creditable draw. Southgate is often urged to pick more attacking, risky players. Well, Pickford is an attacking, risky goalkeeper.
There is also a perception issue. We tend to analyse goalkeeping on the most simple metric of mistakes made. This is despite the fact most things we, the layman, know about it appear to be wrong. Even the one unshakable certainty that goalkeepers must “never get beaten at the near post” seems to be incorrect, judging by the look of longsuffering pain on Kasper Schmeichel’s face when this was put to him in the Sky punditry chair last year.
In reality, goalkeeping has become a much more complex role. Goalkeepers need a wider palette of skills. They need to pass well, to position themselves as the final outfield defender, to manipulate the ball at their feet, to see and manage the transitions. Failure to do so is a less visible failure, but failure all the same. There is a reason only five or six people in the world appear to be flawlessly good at this.
So England need to be careful. Southgate is probably right when he says Pickford doesn’t deserve to be dropped. But he also needs to look after him. Nick Pope is a fine goalkeeper, and looks a safer, steadier choice, a tactical change of direction. The really startling fact is that these are the only two serious candidates. Goalkeeping is a weirdly blocked and neglected area in England. It isn’t hard to see why. You get only one shot at this. Who needs the bother, the risk of blooding a young goalkeeper?
There are couple of things worth saying here. The first is the basic Modern Keeper’s Paradox. Goalkeeping is more than ever an involved discipline requiring outfield skills. And yet goalkeepers are still treated as a special case.
Two bad games with the ball at their feet gets a full-back or midfielder dropped. For some reason goalkeepers don’t get this consideration, are left to deal with bad form on their own, to suffer in the glare. There is a reason some goalkeepers often seem to just “go”. The old orthodoxy is to let them die on their feet or find their own way back.
For a goalkeeper there is still a disgrace and a finality in being dropped. There shouldn’t be. Rotation, managed periods of good and bad form, should be built into the role, and the same should go for the national shirt.
The notion of being England’s Number One has been woven into the mystique of the position. The old idea of the great unflappable English goalkeeper, vessel of some deep, folkish notion of sturdy yeoman manhood, should be laid to rest. Choose your goalkeeper on tactics, form and circumstances. Factor in rest, opposition, formations, tournament goals. Time for all of us to start diving forwards.