Jordan Pickford Wins Coca-Cola Save of the Season for Stunning Stop

Jordan Pickford has been named the 2025/26 Coca-Cola Save of the Season winner for a moment that felt less like a routine stop and more like a piece of defiance carved into Everton folklore.

Deep into stoppage time at St James’ Park, Everton were clinging to a 3-2 lead over Newcastle United. The home crowd were surging, Newcastle were throwing everything forward, and one clean strike looked certain to rip two points away from the visitors.

Then Sandro Tonali caught a volley as sweet as anything he will ever hit.

The ball exploded off his boot, arrowing towards the top of the net. Technically perfect. The kind of strike that usually leaves a goalkeeper frozen, reduced to a spectator.

Pickford refused to play that role.

He sprang, twisted, and somehow managed to get enough of a hand on the shot to divert it onto the crossbar and away to safety. A split-second of instinct and technique, the kind of reaction that separates good goalkeepers from generational ones.

The whistle went not long after. Everton had their win. Pickford had his moment.

“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.”

When a finish earns that kind of praise and the save still steals the headline, you know you’ve witnessed something special.

Alan Shearer, the Premier League’s all-time leading scorer with 260 goals and no stranger to thunderous volleys himself, 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 camp, the reaction was even stronger. Centre-back Jarrad Branthwaite, who had the best view in the house as the ball flew towards goal, described it as “the best save I have ever seen”.

The award panel agreed.

Pickford’s stop first took the Coca-Cola Save of the Month prize for February. It was his second Save of the Month of the 2025/26 campaign and the fourth of his Premier League career, a tally that now stands as a league record. No other goalkeeper has collected as many of those monthly honours.

From there, the save went up against the very best of the season. Ten stops made the Coca-Cola Save of the Season shortlist: nine Premier League Save of the Month winners and one extra entry, a delicate fingertip effort from Tottenham Hotspur’s Antonin Kinsky against Leeds United in May.

James Trafford, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Martin Dubravka, David Raya, Alphonse Areola, Aaron Ramsdale, Karl Darlow and Kinsky himself all had compelling cases. Each produced the kind of moment that usually defines a campaign.

Pickford’s was the one that cut through.

He claimed the trophy after earning the most combined votes from supporters and a panel of football experts, his decisive intervention at St James’ Park standing above a year of outstanding goalkeeping.

The England international was the only goalkeeper this season to win two or more Save of the Month awards. That consistency, married to the sheer drama of the Tonali stop, made his case irresistible.

This is not new territory for him, either. Pickford has now lifted the Coca-Cola Save of the Season award twice, adding the 2025/26 honour to his success in 2021/22, the inaugural year of the prize.

Some goalkeepers build their reputation over years of quiet reliability. Pickford has that, but he also has something rarer: a habit of producing the impossible when the stakes are highest.

On nights like the one at St James’ Park, that habit changes seasons.