St Petersburg: Jordan Henderson has admitted he will be forever in Jordan Pickford’s debt after his teammate’s eye-catching save from Carlos Bacca set up a historic penalty shootout win over Colombia and secured England’s progress into the World Cup quarter-finals.
The Liverpool midfielder had seen his spot-kick brilliantly pushed away by a diving David Ospina in the shootout, only for Mateus Uribe to strike the crossbar and Pickford, with a strong left hand, to deny Bacca and allow Eric Dier to book a meeting with Sweden.
Henderson, who has now not tasted defeat in a record 28 England games in succession, will volunteer to take a penalty in any future shootouts and paid tribute to his fellow Tyne and Wear native.
“You obviously fear the worst when you miss a penalty but Pickers did brilliantly with the save and they’ve hit the bar, so I’m just relieved we got over the line,” said Henderson, who had been consoled by Kieran Trippier after missing his attempt. “We’re a really close group. It’s difficult when you miss and nothing can be said that’s going to make it all right, but it’s not about me. We won in the end, that’s the main thing: a massive win, especially on penalties. I just thanked [Pickford]. I can’t thank him enough. I’m forever in his debt. He said the Mackems have to stick together.
“He deserves all the praise. He got a bit of criticism last week, undeservedly, so I am so happy for him to achieve that. He made some fantastic saves in the game. As for my own penalty, I just went through the process that I normally do, that I’ve been working on. Maybe it was a good height for the keeper — if anything, it needed to be higher or lower — but in penalties you can miss or there can be a good save. Thankfully the lads dug me out. It wouldn’t put me off taking another but it might put Gareth off. I’d take another one but obviously it’s down to the manager. I would understand if he chose someone else.”
Pickford, who missed the post-match celebrations in the dressing room as he carried out a routine Fifa drugs test, had studied Colombia’s penalty takers, with heavy input from the goalkeeping coach Martyn Margetson, the psychologist Pippa Grange and the England set-up’s team of performance analysts, led by Steve O’Brien and Mike Baker.
“I just got down to business, really,” said the goalkeeper. “I did a bit of research: we knew Bacca was maybe a bit of a weak link on the penalties from watching his previous ones. His penalties, on the penalty grid, were all over the shop really. One’s top left, one’s top right. I just thought if the fourth is a pressure penalty, then what about the fifth? You’ve got to score maybe to stay in it. I just made up my mind to go right, trusted my instincts and bang ... strong hands. I’m happy.”
The 24-year-old’s display against Belgium in the final group game had drawn criticism from some pundits as well as his opposite number, Thibaut Courtois, who had suggested Pickford might be hampered by being too short. That was born of a failure to reach Adnan Januzaj’s winning goal, though in Moscow on Tuesday he had been agile enough to deny Uribe spectacularly in the last minute of normal time with a fingertip save.
“The criticism doesn’t annoy me,” Pickford said. “I know straight away if I can do better. It doesn’t take people to criticise me for me to realise it. I’ve had a right go at the Belgium save. If I save it, people would have said: ‘What a save.’ If any other keeper in the tournament had a go like that and it goes in, nothing would have been said. Likewise if it goes in the other end. But we’ve moved on from Belgium and beaten Colombia tonight, a hard and tough game, and now it’s Sweden to look forward to.”
