Jordan Pickford Wins 2025/26 Coca-Cola Save of the Season

Jordan Pickford has been crowned the 2025/26 Coca-Cola Save of the Season winner for a moment that felt less like a routine stop and more like a robbery in broad daylight at St James’ Park.

Everton were clinging to a 3-2 lead deep into stoppage time against Newcastle United, the clock almost out, the home crowd surging for one last twist. Then Sandro Tonali caught a dropping ball as sweetly as technique allows, crashing a vicious volley towards the top corner.

It should have been the equaliser. It should have blown the roof off the place.

Pickford had other ideas.

The England goalkeeper exploded across his line, flung out a hand and somehow managed to palm the ball onto the crossbar, the rebound spinning away to safety. In a match already dripping with drama, this was the defining act – a save that didn’t just preserve three points, it sealed a statement win and, as it turns out, an end-of-season award.

David Moyes could barely disguise his admiration afterwards. The Everton manager called Tonali’s strike “technically brilliant” and insisted the save was “out of this world”, the kind of intervention that belongs on highlight reels for years, not weeks.

Alan Shearer, a man who knows a thing or two about beating goalkeepers, went even stronger. The Premier League’s all-time record scorer labelled it “world class”, stunned by the speed of Pickford’s reaction and the precision required to divert the ball onto the bar rather than into his own net.

Inside the Everton camp, the verdict was even more emphatic. Centre-back Jarrad Branthwaite, who had the perfect view as the volley flew in, described it as “the best save I have ever seen”. Defenders don’t hand out that kind of praise lightly.

The moment had already been recognised once. The stop earned February’s Coca-Cola Save of the Month award, one of two monthly prizes Pickford collected during the 2025/26 campaign. No other goalkeeper managed more than one. This latest honour means he now holds four Save of the Month awards in total, a Premier League record.

From there, the save joined an elite shortlist. Ten stops were nominated for Coca-Cola Save of the Season: nine monthly winners from across the campaign plus Tottenham Hotspur’s Antonin Kinsky, whose fingertip denial against Leeds United in May forced its way into contention.

The final decision combined public votes with the verdict of a panel of football experts. When the numbers were in, Pickford’s stop stood alone at the top, edging out a strong field that included James Trafford, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Martin Dubravka, David Raya, Alphonse Areola, Aaron Ramsdale, Karl Darlow and Kinsky.

This is not new territory for him. Pickford first claimed Save of the Season in 2021/22, the inaugural year of the award. To win it again, three years on, underlines a consistency at the very highest level – not just a flair for the spectacular, but a repeated habit of delivering when the margins are thinnest and the stakes highest.

Goalkeepers often live in the shadows of goalscorers. On that night at St James’ Park, and in the votes that followed, the spotlight belonged firmly to Jordan Pickford – the man who turned a certain goal into the defining save of the season.