From the fallen and the heartbroken, let the first man to stand back up be Jordan Pickford. England’s goalkeeper has been a giant presence at Euro 2020, a graduate of hard footballing levels and now beyond question a genuine elite international performer.

Pickford did all he could to pull glory England’s way. His first shoot-out save in last night's final, from Italy's Andrea Belotti, was doughty. His second, from Jorginho, seemed driven by fate and drenched in the stuff of champions.

A parallel universe this morning has Jorginho’s jog, skip and miss as the defining image of tournament heartbreak. Photos of a beer-splashed Pickford being chaired around Wembley’s wet grass adorn front pages.

Reality bites hard. But this goalkeeper, who always seems both on the edge of his nerves and in animated, energetic control of them, deserves acclaim nonetheless.

Claiming England’s No1 as one of our own here in Cumbria would be an unnecessary stretch. Eighteen games on loan seven years ago means a Carlisle United tattoo is unlikely to be found on Pickford’s body.

We can, though, still take pleasure in the association, that a young pro the Blues helped introduce to a level of first-team football is now proven as one of Europe’s finest; as impressive for his nerve and tournament cojones as his technical goalkeeping.

Pickford can today stand alongside some of England’s nobility in gloves. He has progressed further in an international tournament than Shilton and Seaman ever did. His clean sheet record this summer rivalled that of Banks. Last night’s marginal defeat means, medal-wise, that goalkeeping deity remains a fraction out of reach.

The blond-haired figure in green, though, could scarcely have done more. Pickford produced all that was required in England’s unbreachable group stage games and was then magnificent against Germany. Ukraine was a deceptive breeze ahead of the tension of Denmark, when he was beaten once in the only game he looked slightly skittish. Then came the torture of Italy, when the pinball of a corner kick conquered him, before he extended his limbs to save two of five penalties. On most occasions he was one of England’s best players, sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly.

Pickford has known the peaks and troughs of any club career that puts a young goalkeeper into the hot spotlight, and has had spells at Everton that were not peak-level in terms of performance. Yet the strong will to come through those has translated, for the second time now, into a tournament of great character for a player who, it is significant to say, began in first-team football with Darlington in the Conference before working his gradual way up.

News and Star: Pickford player 18 games on loan at Carlisle in 2014 (photo: Barbara Abbott)Pickford player 18 games on loan at Carlisle in 2014 (photo: Barbara Abbott)

Further loans at Alfreton and Burton preceded his half-season at Brunton Park, where Pickford learned his ropes in the chaos of a Carlisle relegation season. In 2014 he was observed by goalkeeping coach Tony Caig – once a teenage first-teamer himself – as a “very grounded, very driven” young prospect who only turned 20 midway through his United spell.

Pickford’s story is a tribute, firstly, to his own willingness to come out of the big-club cocoon early and take all the thuds and bashes in lower-league football (that theme, incidentally, also applies to Dean Henderson, a Cumbrian cruelly denied a full part in England’s Euros but probably the best long-term rival for Pickford’s international jersey).

It is also a tribute to the dear old loan system, not the other, more modern attempts to warp lower-league football for the benefit of hordes of top-level young players. Pickford went on to Bradford and Preston before Sunderland decided it was time to reap the benefit of his hardened progress.

Everton’s subsequent investment was in someone not just with a basis in quality but with the character to suffer the loneliness of goalkeeping but keep putting himself out front. He helped dissolve England’s defeatist shoot-out reputation in Russia in 2018, and three years later threw the absolute lot at their attempt to get an actual trophy on the table at long, long last.

Those final efforts are now destined to be skipped over in heart-rending montages, to play secondary parts in the suffering of Saka, Sancho and Rashford. They won’t be remembered as well as the overall epic struggle against Italy, when England’s ballsy, confident start blended into an edgy loss of tactical control yet kept them the anxious match of (probably) the best team in the tournament through all the scrapes and scares.

Gareth Southgate’s subs and second-guessing will be pored over for weeks, England’s deployment of their attacking talent a debate that might never end. Football at this level of maximum jeopardy should not all be one-sided praise. A set-up as meticulous and ambitious as England’s these days should want to have its big-game tools examined. It might be that a few cold lessons were served at certain pressure points under the north London rain.

Yet a general haze of satisfaction still deserves to settle over this progressive, outward-reaching young team and its thoughtful boss, even as we chew on the idea that a glorious chance has just slipped away at the bitter last.

They are, these players and this set-up, a good side of England. They remain a reason to like England (and Lord knows that needs to count for something in these scarred times). In strict footballing terms, they are an England that should, from today onwards, be trusted to learn, spread out, evolve.

And an England that, thanks to the fine and fearless Jordan Pickford, appears for the foreseeable in more than safe enough hands.