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The Number One

Jordan Pickford has come in for criticism at Everton for his past mistakes and apparent lack of focus and it wasn't that long ago that many were doubting his role as first-choice keeper. Fast forward past the hysterical media reaction to his part in the Van Dijk incident to today and you have a player who appears to have matured tremendously in the harshest of spotlights

There are few more microscopically scrutinised positions in football than the role of England goalkeeper. It’s one that Jordan Pickford has held since entering the 2018 World Cup as the national team’s first choice between the posts despite being relatively inexperienced at international level.

He left that tournament having helped Gareth Southgate’s team into the semi-finals following his heroics in the penalty shootout against Colombia — not to mention pulling off a stunning full-stretch, finger-tip save in extra-time that didn’t even get replayed during the live broadcast — yet was still unable to escape a cloud in the form of debate over his height, his technique, and his supposedly short arms!

Despite some bemusing criticism of his failure to keep out Italy’s equaliser in the Euro 2020 Final last month — had Leonardo Bonucci not knocked in the rebound and had England been able to hold on to Luke Shaw’s early goal, Pickford’s initial save in that moment would probably be talked about by future generations alongside Gordon Banks’s tremendous save against Brazil in 1970 — Everton’s No 1 came out of the European Championship Finals as the tournament’s “golden glove” winner and, again, one of the standout players among the ranks of the Three Lions. Once again, he did his part by standing tall in the penalty shootout, saving two of the five spot-kicks he faced in the final, but it wasn’t to be for Southgate and England.

The sniping is to be expected on social media but when it extends to the commentary booth, as it did with Lee Dixon early in the tournament, it’s hard to escape the feeling sometimes that England players, and keepers especially, just can’t win.

In those circumstances, Pickford’s performances on the international stage this summer should be applauded. They were even more remarkable given the season he endured at Everton where he was the subject of weeks of harsh criticism that occasionally burst into hysteria in the media for his part in the season-ending injury that Virgil van Dijk suffered in the Merseyside derby last October.

The unabashed Liverpool bias was well documented and, nine months on, it continues, with quips in commentary and in tabloid newspapers that further the narrative that Jordan’s actions were either a premeditated assault on Van Dijk or a somehow unique aberration in professional football. At worst, of course, it involved as much fore-thought as Van Dijk’s own challenge on James Rodriguez a couple of minutes earlier which betrayed a desire to “leave one in” on an opponent; to lay down a marker in a hotly-contested local derby. (Van Dijk was just more fortunate — his effort had lasting effects on James that affected his condition for weeks afterwards but his actions didn’t end James’s season.)

Pickford has a reputation for exuberance that went with his cheeky lad image and the slightly off-beat character that many of the game’s best keepers have. He has been tabloid fodder for the fisticuffs he got into outside a Sunderland pub two of three years back and has “previous” when it comes to losing his head a little in matches. His performance back in the northeast for Everton against Newcastle in March 2019 sticks out as the nadir of his time with the Blues, one that drew sharp criticism and calls for him to rapidly mature or risk losing the faith of the fanbase.

“In some respects, [Pickford’s] cocksure, unfazed attitude has been lauded as one of his strengths,” was the argument posited in this column in the wake of that 3-2 defeat on Tyneside, “and, in a high-stakes era when so few players play with a smile on their face, he can bring some much-needed levity but it has bordered on misplaced arrogance at times this season and it's a trait that can quickly become a liability.”

If he appeared thereafter to eschew the clownery, Jordan was still prone to worrying lapses in focus of the kind that lost a Merseyside derby in agonising fashion in December 2018. Had it not been for a hair’s-breadth VAR decision, one such instance would have gifted victory to Liverpool in that Goodison derby last season and there were enough examples in the second half of the previous campaign to have fans once again questioning whether he was still the long-term answer as first-choice goalkeeper at the club.

It prompted Carlo Ancelotti to not only recommend the signing of a goalkeeper capable of pushing Pickford for the No.1 spot — it had been generally believed that a lack of genuine competition had allowed him to get sloppy — but to also rotate Robin Olsen into the side for much of the first half of the 2020-21 campaign. If Evertonians saw little of the manager they thought they were getting in the Italian during his 18 months with the club, that piece of man-management was, at least, vintage Ancelotti and it proved to be an important aspect of Pickford’s marked improvement in 2021.

The other important component was Pickford’s decision to seek help from a professional psychologist to help him deal with the mental parts of his game, absorb the pressure of having to fight for his place and, in no small part, deal with the overblown media reaction to the events involving Van Dijk.

The result of all of those factors was a return to his best club form since his first season at Everton following his big-money move from Sunderland in 2017 and a continuation of the terrific standards he had set at international level for England. Indeed, despite the debates about his temperament and analysis of his form in the Premier League for Everton, Pickford has never really given anyone cause to doubt his status as England’s No.1. And yet the poisoned pens of some of the nation’s football writers and the jerking knees of the nation’s fans on social media always feel poised to denigrate him at the slightest hint of a mistake.

Everton go into 2021-22 under new manager Rafael Benitez with a new back-up goalkeeper in the form of Asmir Begovic, an experienced hand who has already demonstrated how capable he is with two excellent displays for the club against Millonarios and Pumas in Florida, but unlike a year ago, there is no doubt who will be the first-choice starter between the sticks when the action kicks off against Southampton on 14th August.

His next error won’t be too far away — all goalkeepers make them; it’s impossible to remain mistake-free — but the indications now are that they will be more routine and far less frequent. If that continues into the new season, it will be huge credit to Jordan Pickford, a player who appears to have matured significantly in a short period of time, elevating himself above the complacency, tomfoolery and pantomime villainy that was holding him back from being regarded among the best in his position in the game.

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