Tuesday night’s match between England and Scotland will feature Jordan Pickford in goal.
At Hampden Park on Tuesday night, England players will “thrive” on any environment, according to Jordan Pickford, who has warned Scotland. The Three Lions are prepared for another enormous mental test as their longest enemies celebrate 150 years with a so-called “friendly” after the raw passion of the Wroclaw Stadium on Saturday.
Pickford countered that if there are no qualifying rounds, “you want that competition, you want to be in games you can learn from and get something out of, going into hostile crowds, different football experiences, things you should thrive off.”
The game will be challenging. You know how the fans at Hampden Park are, and we want to take advantage of that, enjoy our time there, and win the game.
Pickford has already noticed the severity because he is from the North East and the Scottish border is only 70 miles away. I totally get it, he continued. I’m a Sunderland native. Every boy understands it. Our initial concentration was on Ukraine; we’ll bounce back quickly and get ready for Tuesday.
That said, the closest the Everton goalkeeper has got to a Scotland clash was when he was part of the St George’s Park set-up around the infamous 2-2 draw in 2017 when it took Harry Kane’s late goal to save the day for England.
When I was in the Under-21s, the 2-2 at Hampden Park the lads thought that was the best atmosphere they have played in, he recalled. “Scotland are in good form, top of their group in the Euros, it is a friendly but it will be competitive against a side in good form.”
The game will be serious for us, according to Scotland boss Steve Clarke, who has supervised a nine-match unbeaten run that includes eight victories and a victory against Spain. You may unwind a little bit during the friendlies, and following the victory in Cyprus, we can do the same. But we aim to triumph.
When we play England, both of our teams will be motivated to win. It ought to be a good night. We have players who are performing well, listen.
Why not approach this game with confidence? For a while now, we haven’t dropped a game in the group stage that was close. We can carry it into the game with the momentum we now have, in my opinion.
