Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford has proclaimed he’s ready to take a penalty as well as facing them from opponents if England go into a shoot-out at the World Cup.
The Three Lions face African champions Senegal in the second round in Qatar on Sunday (7pm kick-off) and after being their shoot-out hero at the same stage of the competition in Russia in 2018 when he saved from Colombia’s Carlos Bacca, Pickford is prepared for the potential of spot-kicks again.
Recalling that game at the Spartak Stadium in Moscow, he told ITV Sport : “It was a great night, for us as England and for us as a team. Not many of us had many caps at that stage, we were relatively new and it was a first major tournament for a lot of us.
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“England history and penalty shoot-outs until then was not a great record and for us to win that night was a great feeling.”
The 28-year-old is in no doubt that he and his team-mates will be primed to do it again in this tournament if required. He said: “I’ll be ready. Hopefully we play well and get the win within 90 minutes but I’ll be fully prepared if we’ve got to go 120 minutes and penalties.
“That’s what all the preparation goes into tournament football about, I never leave a page unturned you know. I’ll be ready.”
Pickford added: “We’ve got a process, we haven’t done too much because the group games are massive and you want to get out of the group first and you don’t want to drill into penalties too early. We’ve hit the knockout stages now, we’ve got to ramp it up a little bit and get prepared fully for it, which we’ve always done as we’ve got a good process and we’ll keep working on it.
“You’ve got penalty takers at clubs who are natural at them but some lads don’t take them naturally for their clubs at home. It’s just about getting everyone prepared for the penalty and executing the penalty that they’re going to take in the game.
“For me, I’ll step up by starting practising in the couple of days before the game defending them and trying to save the lads’ ones but I don’t let their confidence drop. It’s about us as a team just being ready in that moment and if we go to penalties, we’re 100% prepared for that.”
If they do go into a penalty shoot-out in Qatar, England will have to try and exorcise their demons from last year’s European Championship final when they lost on spot-kicks to Italy. Pickford actually saved twice, from Andrea Belotti and a potentially match-winning strike from Jorginho but three consecutive misses from Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka ensured Gareth Southgate’s side were beaten.
However, not only does the Blues custodian back his international team-mates to bounce back, he reveals he’d even be prepared to step up and take one himself like he did against Switzerland in the third-place play-off for the UEFA Nations League in 2019, scoring and then saving the decisive penalty.
He said: “You can always think ‘what if?’ but as a country, as a team, as a squad, we were nearly there. We’ve tasted defeat in a final now, we know what it feels like to be defeated in a final but I think we’ve got to be proud that we got all the way to the final but we didn’t get over the line.
“Now we’ve got to take it to the next step but we can’t look too far forward, we’ve got to focus on our next game which is Senegal. I think we’ve got a lot of characters in our squad and I think we’re all mentally strong in the squad and we know we were defeated on penalties in the Euros final but we can all learn from that, we can get better from that and hopefully we do.
“They’re two top penalty takers (the players who missed against Italy and are in the squad). It wasn’t to be our night in the Euros final but Rashy is unbelievable at penalties and Bukayo for Arsenal, I think he’s their penalty taker at the moment and he’s scored his last four so his confidence is right there.
“If called upon, I’ll take a penalty but hopefully my focus is on saving the penalties and giving the opportunity for the lads taking them to execute their penalties and score them.”
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