Kasper Schmeichel drops a pin in a Google map and we meet in a beautiful village above Nice on Monday. He guides me through the winding streets, past the artist retreats, to a quiet restaurant, sits down and opens up.
The Nice goalkeeper doesn’t talk often, preferring to let his prodigious performances for clubs and country tell its own remarkable story. The Dane reflects humbly and eloquently about the joys of Leicester City’s 5,000-1 title, learning distribution skills from the quarterback Tom Brady, and why he wants to play until Euro 2028 when he will be 41. What is very clear is Schmeichel’s strength of character and his humanity. This is the man who ran towards a burning helicopter.
He talks of the tragedy that claimed the club’s revered owner, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, and the loss of Schmeichel’s hugely popular goalkeeping coach with the national team, Lars Hogh, to cancer. He talks of his love for Christian Eriksen and the team’s fight for their friend’s life at Euro 2020.
All of this trauma inevitably affected Schmeichel but there is a stoicism, too. He’s tough. “You’ll meet these times like the plane crash, like Christian and Lars where it will affect you massively,” he says. “You’ve got to be strong. I’ve still got to be able to do my job.”
Schmeichel’s job is a skill he’s passionate about and a craft he works hard at. His job started at Manchester City, then he was loaned out, was signed by Notts County, then Leeds United and blossomed at Leicester. “I’d been searching for a home for a long time,” he recalls of his arrival at Leicester in 2011. “I’d been alone lots of places. I never really settled until I came to Leicester.”
And came into the world of Nigel Pearson. “I saw him on TV and thought ‘ooh, this is a hard guy’. Nigel would be hard on you when necessary but he has an incredibly human side which doesn’t get seen on TV. After a month Nigel pulled me to one side and said, ‘I wasn’t 100 per cent sure about you from what I’d seen and heard but f**k me you’ve won me over.’ I wanted to impress him, I wanted to work for him. As a football man, you won’t find many better.”
Pearson guided Leicester up, and Claudio Ranieri maintained the momentum. “Claudio was very different to Nigel but the credit I’ll give him is he saw that he came into a team and a club that was functioning very well.” The senior players kept driving the team on. “We had momentum and belief.” The race for the title was mainly with Spurs. “I hadn’t watched any of Tottenham’s games. Every time they were playing I’d done mad stuff like go to the cinema on my own, leave my phone in the car, didn’t want people texting me.”
Spurs had to win at Chelsea on May 2 or Leicester were champions. Many players gathered around the TV at Jamie Vardy’s house. “But I felt if we’re going to win it, I want to be with my wife and kids. They’d been on the whole journey. My wife [Stine] has been with me since I was 17, since my league debut at Darlington [in 2006].
“We went for dinner. I was a nervous wreck. My family found it hilarious. People in the restaurant were getting the scores, so my wife said, ‘let’s go home’. I was putting the kids to bed, my wife comes in to say goodnight to our son and I looked at her, ‘you know something, tell me’.
“She said, ‘You don’t want to know. They [Chelsea] are losing [2-0].’ So I may as well watch the last 35 or so minutes. I had my son on my lap who fell asleep. The first goal [from Gary Cahill] goes in and I’m trying to stay calm and then the second goal [Eden Hazard] goes in and he’s fast asleep in my arms! ‘Someone take him please!’ I give him to my wife and the last few minutes were just torture. It happened, my phone goes mental and we opened a bottle of champagne and celebrated. I got someone to drive me to Vards’ house, met all the boys and celebrated with them. We went out into Leicester, drove past the stadium, saw all the fans, saw incredible scenes that will stay forever in your mind.
“If I could go back to any period in my career, that three to four weeks was absolutely phenomenal. It was just mayhem everywhere. In London, anywhere, away on internationals, the interest was everywhere. What Leicester did is the essence of sport, it transcended money. We lived what was perceived to be impossible. If you build the right team you can achieve something, the right mixture of experience, youth and desire.”
Leicester had the prolific, charismatic Vardy. “He’s just a lad, always up to something, always laughing, always loud,” Schmeichel smiles. “Robert Huth is one of the funniest humans alive. He’s so blunt, so honest, so direct. You’re not going to meet a more English German than him and Dietmar Hamann! Wes [Morgan] was fantastic.
“N’Golo [Kanté] was the loveliest human you can meet, always smiling, a humble guy, just the most outrageously talented footballer, a dream team-mate. To start off he didn’t even have a car and he was walking or running to training!
“When I first saw Riyad [Mahrez], this kid with skinny legs, oh God some of these Championship defenders are going to try and eat him alive but first session you’re seeing him sending people the wrong way. Wow, this kid’s got something! Riyad’s an outrageous footballer, so talented.
“And what I love seeing about Riyad now, he’s as close to being as complete as you can. He was obviously our superstar and creator. Danny Simpson had to do a lot of his dirty work. But now, in a Pep Guardiola team, you’re not going to be able to slack. He’s so disciplined defensively now, so good on the ball and he’s just a fully world-class player. Lovely fellow as well.
“Drinky [Danny Drinkwater] is such a good player. We were devastated to lose ‘Drinky’ to Chelsea. It’s always a risk when you have a good thing and you leave. That’s something I’m discovering. When the reunion happens in — in three years! – it’ll be amazing. I can’t wait. We have a group chat called The Reunion!”
Vichai is always in their thoughts. “Vichai treated people like family,” Schmeichel continues. “That didn’t just go for the players. You saw him with the fans, walking around the stands saying hello to people. If you ask Premier League fans what you want from your owners, you want them to be present, to care, to invest but also be accessible.” Vichai was.
Leicester’s beloved owner died with four others when their helicopter crashed after taking off from the centre-circle of the King Power following the draw with West Ham on October 27, 2018. “He’d come from the dressing room and sometimes the players would walk out with him and wave him off,” Schmeichel recalls. “I remember being stood with his one of his assistants watching and thinking ‘there’s something not right here’. As it started spinning, I turned and ran out the stadium, round the corner heard it land and saw the flames.
“I ran through the car park, sprinted down this hill into another car park and got to the window. I remember the flames and the heat. From what was visible it was quite obvious there was nothing we could do. One of the security guards who’d followed me pulled me back and then he ran back and tried to break the windows to see if they could get in there.
“I remember very vividly at that moment thinking about my own kids, thinking if this explodes then I’m going to leave them and the fear of that and then loads of police came. I got dragged into a side entrance to the stadium. I just knew it was . . . bad.”
He was incredibly brave. “Silly, really,” he replies, then pauses. “Vichai’s someone I cared for deeply,” he resumes. “You’re going to run towards it to see if you can do anything.” It inevitably affected him. “I became a lot more thankful [for his own family] but for a long time I became a lot more fearful. I realised that all it takes is one little thing to go wrong and that could be it. Flying these days isn’t my favourite thing. I’d never go in a helicopter, that’s for sure. My logic wins when I go flying, it’s safer and aerodynamics, and my brother-in-law is a pilot, he explains a lot about that.”
The following Saturday, Leicester travelled to Cardiff City. “It was amazing. I still have the picture of us during the minute’s silence where all of our team, all the backroom team are standing together, there must have been 50 of us. It symbolised everything that Leicester is about and how through the worst times you rise again, like Vichai always said, ‘we will get through the bad times’.”
He’s still in touch with Vichai’s son, Top. “A little bit. He’s the CEO of a global enterprise so he’s a busy guy. I keep in touch with a lot of people there.”
The challenges kept coming for Schmeichel, such as the games behind closed doors during the pandemic. “It was awful. As terrible as football was in those times, it was a good reminder that football isn’t anything without fans.”
The sport was placed in even more perspective when Eriksen collapsed on the pitch in the 42nd minute of Denmark’s European Championship game against Finland on June 12, 2021. The referee, Anthony Taylor, quickly stopped play and signalled to the medics.
“We knew something was seriously wrong,” Schmeichel recalls. Led by Schmeichel and Denmark’s impressive captain Simon Kjaer, the players formed a protective ring around their stricken comrade as medics fought to keep Eriksen alive following his cardiac arrest.
They were shielding a mate. “That’s exactly what Christian is — a mate. Christian’s a superstar but he’s not the type of guy that wants to take centre stage in terms of attention. Look at Christian’s stats — the amount of running he does for the team is incredible.
“We knew the eyes of the world were watching but most importantly we knew his family was watching. His wife, parents, kids were in the crowd and they were on that side so you didn’t want them to see what we saw. We didn’t want the rest of the world to see.
“It’s an intimate moment, it’s life and death and also for the people working, they’re our doctors, they needed space to do their jobs.” Morten Boesen, Denmark’s team doctor, and physio Morten Skjoldager worked with colleagues to save Eriksen, applying a defibrillator. “The medics were absolutely incredible. Any sporting achievement will never compare, for me, to what I saw them do. They’re emotionally involved, Christian’s their friend. They’ve treated him 100 times, grown up with him, so for them to have the clarity of mind, that’s where the professionalism kicks in.
“I remember our doctor at one point having to work something out in his head to do with dosage of medicine very, very quickly under pressure. It was incredible. I had this thing in my head saying to myself, ‘it’s not over until it’s over’. Sabrina [Eriksen’s wife] came down to the pitch, so I ran over to her. I can’t tell her what’s going on, it’s just the most helpless feeling ever.
“Fortunately for me, Simon ran over. Their families are close. One of the physios shouted me, I’ve run back, and he said, ‘he’s awake, he’s awake’. So I’ve ran back to Sabrina and said, ‘he’s awake’. They got him on a stretcher, got him to hospital. There’s no handbook on what you do as a team, what you do for the family. This is when cultures and characters kick in.” Kjaer’s leadership was magnificent. “Simon’s younger than me but you feel really safe around him. He’ll fight for you. I must also mention Anthony Taylor. I’m not one for giving referees too much credit and praise but he did incredibly in that situation, to be thrust into that and handle it.”
Play was eventually resumed. “There’s no right or wrong,” Schmeichel says. “We just said we’re not going to play until we know Christian is all right.” They did eventually but all thoughts were with Eriksen. “These traumatic incidents inevitably bring you closer together.”
Schmeichel and the Danish squad were already dealing with another trauma. Hogh, back-up goalkeeper to Kasper’s father Peter with Denmark and then goalkeeping coach to Kasper with the national team, had fallen ill with pancreatic cancer in 2018. “Lars was just a huge influence on not just my career but my life,” Kasper says. “I’ve been so fortunate in having my dad, Mike Stowell [at Leicester] and Lars . . . these three men have shaped my goalkeeping completely.
“Lars was told he had six months to live. He turned those six months into four-and-a-half years. How Lars fought to the end was inspirational.” When back on international duty, Schmeichel and Denmark’s other keepers would visit Hogh. “We’d hire a car wherever we were and go see him at his house, we’d have the best time, didn’t want to leave him and come back at 4-5 in the morning.” Denmark’s head coach, Kasper Hjulmand, totally understood their brief absences. “The manager was like, ‘that’s more important that you go and see him’.”
Hogh passed away on December 8, 2021. “His son rang me about eight that night. I was away with Leicester, playing Napoli the next day. I was in absolute bits, didn’t sleep, couldn’t stop crying. I told Mike Stowell and Brendan [Rodgers]. They were brilliant with me. The great thing about Brendan is his man-management. When the time came for Lars’ funeral [in Odense on December 14], they gave me all the time off to go home and be with him and his family. I still find myself just about to go to ring Lars.”
Hogh taught Schmeichel to seize every moment. So last summer, he was debating his future. “Well, my contract was coming up and I wasn’t really getting any response [from Leicester],” Schmeichel continues. “I’d have loved to have stayed at Leicester but that wasn’t what was meant to happen. I love the club. Would I go back there? Of course I would. I’d always go back and try and help them. It’s home. Every time I talk about Leicester I start smiling. I definitely miss it. I watch all their games.
“Brendan’s incredible. I’ve never seen in person a coach that good. Clarity was the key in his messaging and how he wanted things. They’re in a transitional period at the moment, but Leicester are such a well-run club, such a well-coached team. Jonny [Evans at the back is a massive miss, Youri [Tielemans is] having a few injuries. From what I’ve seen, Danny [Ward] is doing really well, saved a penalty the other day [from James Ward-Prowse], I was happy for him.”
Schmeichel’s enjoying Nice, and doing well. “I always wanted to experience something new. I spoke with the Ineos group [Nice’s owners], spoke with Sir Dave Brailsford and it was really interesting.”
Does he miss England? “The intensity and pressure of the Premier League is very, very different to here. I used to come up against a lot of very naturally gifted athletes and lots of really fast, strong players. The Premier League has so many [great strikers]: [Didier] Drogba, Sergio Agüero, Harry Kane, Wayne Rooney and [Robin] van Persie all incredible because they create something out of nothing. It takes a split second for them to convert the chance.
“You’re very spoiled in the Premier League, perfect pitches everywhere. Here you play amazing places like Paris, Lyons but you also go to the smaller teams where they don’t have the finances to have a good pitch. I loved playing at Old Trafford and the old White Hart Lane. I really love the old stadiums. I always loved playing at Goodison Park and Anfield, when you walk in you feel the history. A lot of these grounds I went to as a child, sitting in the stands [watching Peter, and I was always saying to myself, ‘I’ll play here one day’.”
His passion for playing endures. “A lot of the conversations I’ve had with Dave [Brailsford] have been about longevity and sustained success. Look at James Milner.” Still playing at 37. “Look at Tom Brady.” The quarterback played until he was 45.
“With distribution, I looked at Brady and Peyton Manning and you see the different pockets they are running into, the spaces, and the pressure they’re facing. You see certain elements from when you stand in the goal yourself when it comes to movement. It’s no surprise my idols are Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Roger Federer, these guys who keep winning. I’m hungrier now. I feel 23. Once you’ve had that trophy in your hands nothing replaces the feeling and I will strive and work until the day I can’t play any more to get that feeling again.
“I’ve got the benefit of having a dad who played and come out of football and having a lot of his friends all say ‘yes, you might have good life after playing but nothing will beat being a footballer’. My intention is to play as long as I can. I want to play 2026 [World Cup] and even 2028 [the Euros] for Denmark.” With that, we leave the restaurant, retrace our steps to the pin point and Schmeichel heads back to his remarkable career.
