You have to go back a decade to find a major tournament England started without Jordan Pickford in goal. That is the scale of what Thomas Tuchel unsettled on Saturday night, when he gave James Trafford his first competitive cap against the world champions and watched him lose 3-2.
Tuchel has since spelled out the arrangement. The two goalkeepers get two consecutive matches each across this international break, which is not a rotation so much as an audition with a stopwatch on it.
Tuchel picked the hardest possible test
"I think he deserved to get the two matches, that's why we gave him two matches," the England manager said. "He started the Premier League season well and gets minutes as number one at Leeds. Jordan did absolutely nothing wrong but we wanted to use this competition to see how far actually James is."
Trafford, 23, showed what Tuchel presumably wanted to see. He was comfortable with the ball at his feet and made a good save to keep out Ferran Torres in the first half. He was also beaten three times. Judging a goalkeeper on a night when Spain extend an unbeaten run to 39 matches is a blunt instrument, but that appears to have been the point of choosing this fixture rather than the trip to the Czech Republic on Tuesday.
Not everyone agreed with the framing. "I think Jordan Pickford will be very disappointed," former England goalkeeper Paul Robinson said on BBC Radio 5 Live. "If he is number one, then why is he not playing against the world champions?" Ian Dennis went further, calling the decision strange and arguing that the Czech Republic and Croatia games were the natural place to look at Trafford.
A career that has already been round the houses
Trafford had played just 32 top-flight matches before moving to Leeds in a deal worth up to 45m pounds, and the route there was not smooth. He came through Manchester City's academy, joined Burnley for an initial 15m in the summer of 2023, and conceded 67 goals in 28 matches before losing his place. He was outstanding in the promotion season that followed, with Burnley letting in sixteen all year, and City bought him back for 27m last summer hoping he would be Pep Guardiola's first choice.
Four weeks later City signed Gianluigi Donnarumma. Trafford spent the season as the understudy, though he did start both the FA Cup final and the Carabao Cup final, and he already had an England Under-21 European Championship medal from 2023, won partly because he saved a stoppage-time penalty against Spain in the final. Leeds now sit fifth in the Premier League with two clean sheets to his name.
What Pickford still has on him
Ninety-one caps and 46 clean sheets, for a start. Pickford overtook Peter Shilton as England's most-capped World Cup goalkeeper when he started the quarter-final win over Norway this summer, and he has saved four of the fourteen penalties he has faced in major tournament shootouts. He played every minute of the World Cup until the third-place play-off against France, when Dean Henderson came in.
Over the longer view the gap is still clear. Nobody in the Premier League has prevented more expected goals than Pickford since the start of the 2024-25 season. This particular campaign is closer: Pickford is preventing more goals, while Trafford has the higher save percentage and the better passing accuracy. Pickford is 32 and would be 34 by Euro 2028, which is the number that has quietly changed the conversation.
Context: England lost 3-2 to Spain at Wembley on Saturday 26 September in their Nations League opener. James Trafford, 23, Leeds United, made his competitive England debut and has three caps in total. Jordan Pickford, 32, Everton, has 91 caps and 46 clean sheets and made his debut in 2017. Thomas Tuchel has said the pair will get two consecutive matches each during this international break. England travel to the Czech Republic on Tuesday.
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