While the top goalkeeper at the FIFA World Cup finals receives the official Golden Glove award, there is no official positional prize for custodians at the UEFA European Championship.
The official tournament statistics do not give a full picture of how well the 25 goalkeepers fielded have played at the finals, but offer some useful insight into the pressures No1s have been under, and how well they have coped.
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Most clean sheets
5: Jordan Pickford (England)
3: Thibaut Courtois (Belgium)
3: Gianluigi Donnarumma (Italy)
England became the first team to keep clean sheets in the first five games of a EURO after eliminating Ukraine in the quarter-finals. The first goal Jordan Pickford conceded at these finals was also the first EURO 2020 goal scored from a direct free-kick, Mikkel Damsgaard’s opener for Denmark in the semi-final at Wembley. Regardless of the outcome of Sunday’s final, the Everton keeper will have registered the most clean sheets at this championship.
Most saves
21: Yann Sommer (Switzerland)
18: Uğurcan Çakır (Turkey)
18: Kasper Schmeichel (Denmark)
18: Danny Ward (Wales)
The number of saves a goalkeeper makes obviously reflects the number of shots that opponents have on goal, so inevitably sides who are under the cosh defensively have busier keepers. Switzerland’s Yann Sommer was seemingly the busiest of all at EURO 2020, but his 21 saves came over the course of five games whereas Uğurcan Çakır’s 18 stops were condensed into only three matches. Pickford has produced nine saves at EURO 2020 while his final opposite number Gianluigi Donnarumma has made nine.
Fewest goals conceded
1: Jordan Pickford (England)
3: Gianluigi Donnarumma (Italy)
3: Thibaut Courtois (Belgium)
3: Lukas Hradecky (Finland)
3: Anton Shunin (Russia)
Again, the raw statistics are not a direct measure of a goalkeeper’s ability, but Pickford’s record of 11 saves to one goal conceded looks good on paper. Conversely, the two custodians who conceded the most at this tournament – Ukraine’s Georgiy Bushchan, ten, and Switzerland’s Sommer, nine – were both regarded as having put in excellent performances at EURO 2020.
Most punches
9: Stole Dimitrievski (North Macedonia)
6: Jordan Pickford (England)
5: Gianluigi Donnarumma (Italy)
5: Yann Sommer (Switzerland)
Clearing the lines is an essential skill for goalkeepers and if you cannot make a catch, a punch can go a long way to getting the ball away to safety. Of course, the keepers who make the most punches are often the ones who have the most to do, and Stole Dimitrievski had more to do than most as tournament debutants North Macedonia vied with more seasoned campaigners.
Penalty saves
Six keepers have saved penalties in standard play during EURO 2020: Ukraine’s Bushchan, North Macedonia’s Dimitrievski, Slovakia’s Martin Dúbravka, Finland’s Lukáš Hrádecký, France’s Hugo Lloris and Denmark’s Kasper Schmeichel. A further seven penalties have been stopped during shoot-outs, three each by Switzerland’s Sommer and Spain’s Unai Simón, plus one by Italy’s Donnarumma.
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