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, and it took a moment of pure goalkeeping madness at St James’ Park to do it.
Everton were hanging on. Deep into stoppage time, 3-2 up away to Newcastle United, the away end already half-celebrating, half-praying. Then Sandro Tonali stepped up and caught a volley as clean as you’ll see all season.
The strike screamed towards the top corner. It looked unstoppable.
Pickford refused to accept that.
Exploding off his line, the Everton and England No 1 twisted in mid-air and somehow got enough on the ball to divert it onto the crossbar, the rebound spinning away to safety. Not just a save, but a match-winner in its own right. Newcastle fans stared in disbelief. Everton players sprinted to their goalkeeper as if he had just scored at the other end.
That single, outrageous moment has now been judged the best of the campaign.
A save “out of this world”
The stop had already been recognised once. It took February’s Coca-Cola Save of the Month award, one of two monthly prizes Pickford collected in the 2025/26 Premier League season. No other goalkeeper managed that double. In fact, it lifted him to four Save of the Month awards in his career, a Premier League record.
David Moyes, never one for easy superlatives, could barely contain himself.
“It was worthy of a goal,” the Everton manager 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."
From the touchline, Moyes saw the technique, the footwork, the split-second decision to trust his reactions. From the stands and the television gantry, it simply looked impossible.
Alan Shearer, the league’s all-time leading scorer with 260 goals and a man who has beaten more than a few goalkeepers from that range, needed only two words: “world class”.
“It is a brilliant strike from Sandro Tonali, but an unbelievable save,” Shearer added. “The reaction to get that onto the bar was remarkable.”
Inside the Everton camp, the reaction was even stronger. Defender Jarrad Branthwaite, who had the perfect view as the last line in front of his goalkeeper, called it “the best save I have ever seen”.
Beating the best
The award did not come by default. Pickford’s stop emerged from a shortlist of 10 outstanding saves across the campaign. Nine of those had already been named Premier League Save of the Month winners, joined by Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky’s fingertip denial against Leeds United in May.
From that elite group, public votes combined with the verdict of a panel of football experts to decide the winner. The pressure, this time, came not from Tonali’s right boot but from a field stacked with specialists in the art of the impossible.
James Trafford, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Martin Dubravka, David Raya, Alphonse Areola, Aaron Ramsdale, Karl Darlow and Kinsky himself all had their own season-defining moments in the frame. All were beaten by Pickford’s split-second decision and that outstretched glove in front of the Gallowgate End.
He stood alone as the only goalkeeper to collect two or more Save of the Month awards in 2025/26. Now he stands alone again.
Building a legacy between the posts
This is not new territory for Pickford. The Everton keeper has now claimed Coca-Cola Save of the Season twice, adding the 2025/26 honour to his success in 2021/22, the inaugural year of the award.
Goalkeepers often talk about the thin line between hero and scapegoat. One misjudged cross, one fumble, and a season can tilt. On that night at St James’ Park, with Tonali’s volley arrowing towards the top corner, Pickford walked that line and came out on the right side again.
For Everton, it was three points secured. For Pickford, it was something more enduring: another defining image in a career increasingly built on moments that stop time as well as shots.
