Darren Randolph showed he’s more than just a safe pair of hands against Italy on Wednesday night.
The West Ham goalkeeper has hardly put a foot wrong since becoming the first choice between the sticks for the Republic of Ireland over the last 12 months, despite failing to break through into Slaven Bilic’s starting XI in the Premier League.
Randolph came off the bench against Germany last October, made a couple of saves, set up Shane Long’s historic winner and hasn’t looked back since.
However, the West Ham stopper isn’t content with just preventing his opponents scoring, and decided to show off his silky footwork in the first-half of Ireland’s 1-0 win over the Azzurri.
Italy forward Simone Zaza attempted to put pressure on Randolph, but the 29-year-old performed a Cruyff turn, and casually dragged the ball away to safety.
Randolph’s piece of skill was impressive enough as it was – although it did leave more than a few Irish fans clutching their hearts – without recording this brilliantly bizarre statistic.
The Ireland ‘keeper has now completed more dribbles (1) in Euro 2016 than Spanish midfielders Cesc Fabregas and Thiago, Belgium striker Romelu Lukaku, Swiss striker Breel Embolo and Polish forward Arkadiusz Milik.
Darren Randolph completed more dribbles (1) in the group stages of #EURO2016 than:
Fabregas
Lukaku
Thiago
Embolo
Milik(All 0)
— Ben McAleer (@BenMcAleer1) June 22, 2016
Over to you, Joe Hart.
