On Monday, Jordan Pickford returns to Sunderland for the first time since he became the most expensive goalkeeper in British football in 2017 by joining Everton in a £25m transfer. But his old PE teacher recalls that the England number one used to score goals rather than save them for his school team.

Pickford won his 80th international cap in a 5-0 win in Latvia last month as Thomas Tuchel’s team became the first European nation to qualify for next summer’s World Cup finals. In doing so he extended the sequence for the longest-ever run without conceding a goal by an England keeper, having surpassed Gordon Banks’ 59-year record in the previous game against Wales.

But back when the Everton hero was a pupil under Jim Welch at St Robert of Newminster Catholic School in his home town of Washington, he was a prolific performer in the centre of the park.

Mr Welch, 71, told the ECHO: “I...