It’s now 1360 days since Everton’s Jordan Pickford injured Liverpool star Virgil van Dijk in the Merseyside derby, but that’s not stopped the Dutch media from raking it up again today.
De Telegraaf are the offenders, as they take a thinly veiled swipe at the Everton goalkeeper ahead of England vs Netherlands in the semi-finals of Euro 2024.
The newspaper look at the Three Lions today and various aspects of the team before the big game, including the expectations, Gareth Southgate, the ‘icon’ Harry Kane and the ‘talent’ Kobbie Mainoo.
They then come to ‘the outsider’ Jordan Pickford. On him they say all goalkeepers are a little crazy and that’s certainly the case for the Everton man.
Then they dive into the age old, tale of woe and how Van Dijk does not have the best memories of the goalkeeper, who ‘destroyed’ his knee in 2020 and left him sidelined for almost a year.
According to De Telegraaf the Everton star is a ‘hustler’ and perhaps not one of the more popular members of the current England squad, something we’d dispute after his latest heroics against Switzerland.
There is some praise as they say he can ping balls across the pitch ‘as if he were sending balls onto the green cloth’ at the table at the Snooker World Cup. That’s it though.
Not that Pickford will mind of course, he’s already proven himself to England and is almost universally loved at Everton, so Dutch criticism will likely be water off a duck’s back at this point.
Indeed, he’ll likely be relishing it, and perhaps the prospect of creating more Dutch tears to add to the ones they’re still crying over Van Dijk’s knee, three years after it happened.
