PETER SCHMEICHEL INTERVIEW:
United legend opens up on famous penalty save, the Solskjaer uplift and his son Kasper’s bravery
AS ONE member of Manchester United’s 1999 treble team reinvents himself spectacularly at Old Trafford, another is still searching for the right path.
If Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s United story is not in need of the extra chapter currently being written, neither is Peter Schmeichel’s.
They were, and are, different characters, for sure. Solskjaer the boy-striker, Schmeichel a mountain of ice and fire between the posts.
Now, two decades on, Schmeichel remembers the greatest days of a great career with predictable fondness. As for the now, at the age of 55, the Dane is tentatively feeling his way back towards a place in the game.
This week found him at St George’s Park, just one face in a room full of 30 football people taking their UEFA Pro Licence.
‘It’s one of those strange things in life that you come through a very long career of playing and you need a new challenge,’ says Schmeichel. ‘I have done a lot of media work and that was a new challenge. But now that I’m here, I feel really eager to get back in.
‘There are different roles and not necessarily coaching roles. But I feel I want to do something. For me, I was late in retiring (he was 39).
‘I kept thinking I was going to go back into the game and then one day you look at your birth certificate and you are 50.
‘I’m not sure I would be a particularly good coach. I think I could manage but I think maybe something like a director of football role is more suitable to me.’
Dressed in jeans and hoodie, Schmeichel remains an imposing man. There is, however, a softness to him — even a slight hesitance — that those who played with him at Old Trafford would maybe not recognise.
He achieved much in the game and remains an iconic figure at United and in Denmark, for whom he played 129 times.
Like Solskjaer, his United summit was reached on a hot night in Barcelona in 1999. But Schmeichel claims to remember nothing of the Champions League final win over Bayern Munich.
‘My brain just overloaded,’ he says.
Other pictures of that treble season thankfully do come clearer to his mind. Tomorrow United face Arsenal in the Premier League and it is a replayed FA Cup semi-final between the clubs, won for United by Ryan Giggs, that Schmeichel turns to when prompted now.
‘Now that I do remember clearly, funnily enough,’ he smiles. ‘Those two games for me, Sunday and Wednesday, they are the best games ever. If you want two football teams to really battle it out, man for man, just equal, nothing between them at the end — one stroke of luck that separates you — at the highest, highest level. I don’t know if you were there but it was just...’
United and Arsenal drew the first semi-final 0-0 in April at Villa Park. Three days later they reconvened on the same pitch and Giggs was able to send United to the final in extra-time after Alex Ferguson’s team survived Roy Keane’s sending off and a Dennis Bergkamp penalty, saved by Schmeichel in the 90th minute.
To this day, Phil Neville believes Schmeichel saved his United career and he is only half joking. It was Neville who brought down Ray Parlour to concede the penalty that Schmeichel saved, diving to his left.
‘Yeah, this penalty, this is what I remember,’ nods Schmeichel. ‘When it was given I thought there were still about 10 minutes left. But there weren’t. Much less.’
Schmeichel claims not to have researched Bergkamp’s penalties. Nor was there a goalkeeping coach with an iPad telling him which way to go.
‘No, it was just luck,’ he shrugs.
At a time when Arsenal and United were England’s dominant teams, that game proved decisive. United won the FA Cup and, emboldened by their defeat of Arsene Wenger’s side, pipped them to the Premier League title by a single point.
So two trophies could easily have been dressed in Arsenal red, while United’s three could have been only one. ‘You guys in the
media said that whoever won the semi-final would win the Premier League as well,’ Schmeichel recalls.
‘I think all the players bought into that. When I am asked, what is the best game I have ever taken part in, I always reply that I can’t say one game — I say those two semi-final games. And I played one of the major roles. I was lucky.’
Anyone who saw Schmeichel play or train will remember that fortune never really came in to it.
The Dane was an innovator. He did not arrive at Old Trafford until he was 28 and played 292 times in the league over eight years.
Few goalkeepers before him had possessed such athleticism or power of personality.
The latter did not suit everybody but few goalkeepers have written their names across a team or an era like he did.
Despite subsequent spells at Aston Villa and, remarkably, Manchester City, Schmeichel’s loyalties have never wavered.
‘Ole is a good coach and that is something that we have always known,’ says Schmeichel of his former team-mate.
‘I think there’s so much Manchester United in the team now that we haven’t seen for quite a bit and this is so uplifting.
‘The optimism and the happiness is back. We’re talking about Manchester United, you know.
‘We have a sniff of third in the league and we’re happy with that, really, really happy with that.
‘That’s not something that we’re used to being. But we’re so happy it’s going that way.
‘You can see the players are enjoying playing. To be able to run forward as a midfield player and end up in the box, knowing that someone else will deal with the problem behind you must be great.’
Schmeichel is also emotionally tied to another Premier League club. His son Kasper has played almost 300 league game for Leicester City and won the Premier League title three seasons ago.
The two men speak every day, so it was not a surprise when Kasper called his father after Leicester’s home game against West Ham on October 27. On this occasion, though, the 32-year-old was not calling to discuss the football.
The Leicester goalkeeper had just witnessed a helicopter carrying Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha crash outside the King Power Stadium. All five people onboard were killed and Schmeichel was one of the first on the scene.
‘We talk every day about my life and about his life,’ says Schmeichel softly.
‘But there is nothing that can prepare you for being a witness to that or for being the dad of someone who has seen that.
‘You don’t run to a burning helicopter but that’s what he did that day. That speaks volumes.
‘I still can’t believe that it happened. On that day Kasper had some friends over from Denmark and they watched the helicopter leave.
‘I don’t think you should promote anyone for doing something on an occasion like that but in times like that you need someone who can stand up, who you can lean against.
‘Kasper was one. His instinct to run to the helicopter is what makes me most proud — but also scared.’
With Leicester playing their first home game under new manager Brendan Rodgers this afternoon, there was talk of an excess of player power in the Foxes dressing room in the lead up to Claude Puel’s sacking.
Along with Jamie Vardy and Wes Morgan, it has been suggested that Schmeichel may have too much influence.
How does it feel, as a father, to hear and read that?
‘What a sneaky question,’ Schmeichel smiles.
‘What we are dealing with now is a different world, a different generation and it’s going to get more towards that.
‘Everybody has their own little media station — they have YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. Straight away you can communicate with the world.
‘If you are in that position as a footballer you become more powerful — that is not a Leicester thing, that is a completely general thing.
‘Of course I’m not going to answer your question. But results speak for themselves, you cannot not win in 11 games if you have those type of good players.
‘That went for the manager before and it’s for the manager now. When the club invests that sort of money you have to get some kind of results.’
With what started out as a 10-minute conversation now heading towards the half-hour mark, Schmeichel excuses himself. His course mates are waiting for their next session of a day of media training.
Schmeichel says he has enjoyed it.
One final question concerns United’s oldest rivals, Liverpool. In these pages two winters ago, former Liverpool manager Graeme Souness claimed Schmeichel wrote to him asking for a trial in the early 1990s, declaring himself a ‘lifelong’ fan of the club. So what of it? ‘Let me put this to bed right now,’ Schmeichel says, with some firmness.
‘It is an absolute fabrication. The thing is, I have worked with Graeme twice on TV since that came out and I have forgotten to mention it!
‘I have to admit when Jan Molby played for Liverpool, as a Dane, you wished to watch him. He played in a great time.
‘But that is as far as I can stretch it for Liverpool. It has always been Manchester United for me.’
THE 1999 SEMI-FINAL Best game? Those two semi-finals. And I played one of the major roles. I was lucky THE LEICESTER TRAGEDY Kasper’s instinct to run to a burning helicopter makes me proud... and scared