We met as opponents, but Kasper and I soon became team-mates at City when I joined them a few months after that game at Gay Meadow, and we clicked straightaway. Right from the start, we were never rivals, always good friends.
Kasper was the first person to welcome me at City on my first day at the training ground. He was actually waiting for me, to take me into the building. I’ll never forget that, because it meant a lot.
For me at the time, it was especially huge because of his name. I’d love to just talk about Kasper here but you cannot ignore the fact that his dad was Peter Schmeichel, a goalkeeping legend who I really looked up to.
That got Kasper through a few doors, and got him into conversations, but the rest? He had to do it all himself.
In fact, you could say he had it tougher because he knew people were judging him before he stepped into goal because of who he was.
His response was to work harder than everyone, forge his own path and write his own place in the Premier League history books, and win more than 100 caps for Denmark.
That attitude has always been part of his make-up and has helped to make him an incredible goalkeeper – hard-working and strong, but also opinionated and willing to stand by his word.
All of this was part of his journey down to League Two and back to become a title winner with Leicester, via the loan moves he made at every level, or when he was willing to take risks and drop down divisions in order to play first-team football.
He has built his career the way he has, because he has never stopped wanting to do more. We were the same in that regard because that kind of drive shaped my career too.
Where we were different was how we identified our goals when we were young goalkeepers.
We would talk about where we hoped our journey would take us. Kasper always said he had set out to try to win the Premier League, and was very open and honest about that, while my approach was that I decided I would go for it every day, no matter where my career took me.
I kind of lived my career like that, even when I started winning things with City. There were no limits and I was not afraid to go lower or higher. My outlook was that whether I was playing first-team football for Shrewsbury Town in League Two or England at a World Cup finals, I was up for it.
Source Agencies
