ENGLAND hero Jordan Pickford repeated his water bottle trick in Sunday’s heartbreaking Euro 2020 final shootout defeat to Italy.
The Three Lions took the lead almost instantly through Luke Shaw before the Azzurri battled back with the contest ending 1-1 after extra-time.
Pickford famously had the details of Colombia’s penalty takers back in 2018 when England broke their dreadful shootout curse at the World Cup.
And the 27-year-old did the same again against Italy and it almost worked.
The Everton stopper saved two penalties but that was still not enough to prevent him from being on the losing side.
Pickford was pictured checking the bottle before the penalties at Wembley.
However from the angle of the camera, it actually appears that none of the players listed took a spot-kick.
Italian aces Alessandro Florenzi, Giacomo Raspadori, Rafael Toloi, Bryan Cristante, Francesco Acerbi, Alessandro Bastoni and Ginaluigi Donnarumma were all listed on the side of Pickford’s bottle.
But it was Dominico Berradi, Andrea Belotti, Leonardo Bonucci, Federico Bernardeschi and Jorginho who took the penalties for Italy, with Pickford saving both Belotti and Jorginho’s efforts.
Misses from Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka led to England going down 3-2 in the shootout.
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Pickford was also caught on camera telling himself ‘no problem’ before spectacularly SAVING Jorginho’s penalty.
Had the Chelsea midfielder scored, Italy would have triumphed then and there in the shoot-out, but Pickford was having none of it.
The stopper, who revealed he started seeing a psychologist at the start of the season, was caught on camera geeing himself up.
He then proceeded to make a terrific save down low to his right to deny Jorginho.
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
