When 35-year-old Raul Jimenez lines up against England in Mexico City on Sunday, he might allow himself pause, just for a second, to take in the situation.
Five and a half years after suffering a horrifying head injury while playing for Wolverhampton Wanderers in a Premier League match against Arsenal, Jimenez will be at the mighty Estadio Azteca and searching for his third World Cup 2026 goal against the nation where he’s played since 2018.
There will be a sense of familiarity. Mexico vs England in the World Cup at the temporarily renamed Mexico City Stadium is a huge occasion for everyone involved but Jimenez and Javier Aguirre’s Mexico have already played and won there three times since the competition started.
Raul Jimenez has been a thorn in Jordan Pickford’s side
If the veteran striker, who has returned to relegated Wolves after three seasons with Fulham, casts his eye to the opposing goalmouth, he will find there a face he knows well.
England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford has been on the wrong end of more of Jimenez’s 68 Premier League goals than anyone else. In 12 matches against Everton for both of his English clubs, the former Benfica hitman has scored six times.
Pickford was in goal for all six and no other goalkeeper has conceded six Jimenez goals in England’s top division.
Along with El Tri’s fearsome unbeaten World Cup record at the most famous football stadium in the Americas and Azteca’s 2200-metre altitude, Jimenez having the beating of Pickford could be another slight edge in Mexico’s favour.
It’s hardly ideal with a World Cup quarter-final place on the line but if you’re expecting Pickford to get in his own head over being Jimenez’s favourite opposition goalkeeper, you might need to think again.
The Mexico striker’s nuisance factor for Pickford was extremely prominent in Old Gold but rather less pronounced in Jimenez’s more recent stint at Craven Cottage.
Just one of his goals against the Three Lions goalkeeper was scored for Fulham and it came in a 3-1 home defeat at the end of the 2024-25 season. Either side of that, Mexico’s leading man has been goalless in five appearances against Pickford.
The first five times Jimenez scored past Pickford were in the first five matches they played against one another: one in each of the first four games between Wolves and Everton that featured both players prior to Jimenez’s injury and then one more in the first meeting after his return.
Of his six goals against Pickford, three were headers and one was a penalty. There’s nothing about Jimenez that will surprise Pickford, Thomas Tuchel or England.
Enveloped by a feverishly partisan crowd in surroundings he considers home, Jimenez will be as much of a threat as Mexico’s leading scorer at the competition. Julian Quinones has scored three times but nobody in the England camp is unaware of the danger posed by Jimenez.
He might be featuring in his last World Cup in his mid-thirties having elected to drop down into the second tier to return to Molineux, but Jimenez is a known quantity.
He’s going to work hard, move as smartly as any Premier League centre-forward, throw his body around and use every trick in the Big Nasty Book of Brilliant Strikers to add goal number seven against Pickford.
Knowing all that is one thing. Stopping him doing it is another and it would be a great place for Tuchel and England to start.
