Jordan Pickford's Coca-Cola Save of the Season at St James' Park
Jordan Pickford’s season-defining fingertip at St James’ Park has been crowned the 2025/26 Coca-Cola Save of the Season – and it is hard to argue with the verdict.
Everton were clinging to a 3-2 lead deep into stoppage time against Newcastle United, the kind of fraught finale that has broken many a goalkeeper. One last cross, one last second ball, and suddenly Sandro Tonali was thundering a volley towards the top corner in front of an expectant home crowd.
Then Pickford exploded.
The England No 1 sprang to his left, twisted mid-air and somehow managed to thrust a strong hand up to the ball, diverting Tonali’s ferocious strike onto the crossbar and away. Not parried into danger. Not helped half-heartedly on its way. Turned, decisively, to safety.
The save did more than preserve three points. It rewrote the awards list.
That moment at St James’ Park first landed Pickford the February Coca-Cola Save of the Month award. It was his second such prize of the 2025/26 campaign and the fourth of his Premier League career – a record haul for any goalkeeper since the honour was introduced.
Even in a league accustomed to spectacular goalkeeping, the reaction was instant and unanimous.
“It was worthy of a goal,” Everton manager David Moyes said afterwards. “Tonali couldn't have hit that any better or any sweeter if he tried again. It was technically brilliant, his volley, but I have to say that the save was out of this world.”
Alan Shearer, who has seen more than most from that end of St James’ Park, did not bother dressing it up. The Premier League’s all-time leading scorer with 260 goals simply called it “world class.”
“It is a brilliant strike from Sandro Tonali, but an unbelievable save,” Shearer said. “The reaction to get that onto the bar was remarkable.”
Inside the Everton dressing room, the praise went even further. Centre-back Jarrad Branthwaite, usually the one doing the rescuing, labelled it “the best save I have ever seen.”
The award itself came after a heavyweight shortlist. Ten stops made the final cut: nine Premier League Save of the Month winners, plus Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky’s delicate fingertip denial against Leeds United in May. From full-stretch dives to close-range reactions, it was a catalogue of elite goalkeeping.
Pickford came out on top after earning the most combined votes from the public and a panel of football experts. When the numbers were counted, the save that had silenced St James’ Park also silenced the competition.
He was the only goalkeeper all season to win two or more Save of the Month awards, underlining a campaign in which his influence for Everton stretched far beyond one headline moment. His winning effort edged out standout stops from James Trafford, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Martin Dubravka, David Raya, Alphonse Areola, Aaron Ramsdale, Karl Darlow and Kinsky.
This is not new territory for him either. Pickford has now claimed the Coca-Cola Save of the Season prize twice, adding this latest triumph to his success in 2021/22, the inaugural year of the award.
For a position so often judged on mistakes, these honours mark something different: a career being defined, increasingly, by the nights when the net simply refused to ripple.
