Craig Gordon #21

Profile

The World Cup feels an appropriate end to an extraordinary career that in Scotland terms began in May 2004. The intervening years saw Gordon move for a British transfer record for a goalkeeper (£9m in 2007) and encounter serious injury which looked like curtailing his career. Gordon bounced back to prolong his career; winning a bounty of honours at Celtic, returning to boyhood club Hearts and prolonging his international involvement for much longer than anybody reasonably anticipated. His insane save for Hearts at Dundee in January will go down not only as his finest but one of the best Scottish domestic football has witnessed in living memory. “That is a moment I will treasure,” Gordon said. So, too, one of the few boxes he had left to tick; a World Cup place.

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