This programme contains strong language and adult themes.
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(REPEATED FALL OF WAVES)
(RELAXING ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC)
'All of my life since I was a kid,
I wanted to be the hero in the game.
Unbeatable.
Looking back now...
there was nothing that could stop me.
My name is Peter Boleslaw Schmeichel.
At least that's how my mother pronounces our surname.
I'm more famous for being called...
COMMENTATOR: Schmeichel!
Fantastic save from the world's number one.
'I wanted to enforce control on everything, all the time.
I had to be like that.'
(SPEAKING DANISH)
GARY NEVILLE: 'Brutal. Passionate. Mistakes couldn't happen.'
'He has this attitude and has this strong presence,
which can be a little bit intimidating.'
'Oh, an astonishing save!'
He was our greatest goalkeeper ever.
When you've got a goalkeeper like that, you don't need defenders.
When a striker is in front of him, it's not like he's in front of somebody else.
He created something, gave something to football.
'Fantastic stop by Peter Schmeichel!'
'He reinvented the position that's fundamental to the game.'
'Oh!'
'Is Peter Schmeichel like God, then, in Denmark?
He is God. There's only one God, that's Peter.'
'Peter was one of a kind. But his weakness was his temper.'
'My dad was the footballer. That was our whole identity.'
We were not meant to see him be weak. That was not him.
'Goalkeeper is the position of ultimate responsibility.
If you haven't stood there, you don't know that feeling.'
You have to be bulletproof.
'There was a realisation about who I was, who I am.
Life is understood backwards, but it's lived forwards.
You have to live it.'
(MAN SPEAKING DANISH)
(APPLAUSE)
(SPEAKING DANISH)
'I'm born to a Danish mother and a Polish father.
When I was a kid, if I was challenged,
I would take the challenge
and I would show everybody that I could do it,
and I would do it much better.
If somebody did something that I hadn't done before,
it was the utmost importance to me to do that even better.
If somebody jumped two metres, I had to jump three metres.'
'If we were climbing somewhere, he was climbing higher.
He was funny. He was full of life.'
He could not sit on a chair. I mean, he was all over the place.
'I did some really crazy things, but I wanted to do stuff
that was impossible to other kids. To be on top.
I grew up with this narrative in my home,
"You have to be the best." And it came from my father.
I think it was to protect himself.
He had lost his father on the first day of the Second World War,
the invasion of Poland.'
He died in that first day, and then had his mother taken away
when the war was over.
'She was literally taken away in front of four kids,
and they never saw her again.
She was put into concentration camp, and she died there.'
Christ, to live with that...
That gives me an understanding of some of his behaviours at times.
'He was carrying around demons for most of his life.
Back in 1961, the way that my father came to Denmark
was quite extraordinary.
My parents met in Poland, my mother was on a cruise ship
that went to a small coastal town called Sopot.
She loves theatre.
Somehow "A Taste of Honey" was on in Sopot,
and it's set in Salford, in Manchester,
and the main character is called Peter.
She sees this guy, he's stood with tickets.
She goes up, persuades him to part with one of those tickets.
That was my father. He was a professional musician.
She stayed for six months, and they decided to get married.
My mother was pregnant with my big sister.
One day, and this is very typical of my mother, she says,
"OK, I'm going back to Denmark. Find your own way there."
Of course, she could leave, she had a visa.
But if you were a Polish citizen, that was impossible at the time.
You couldn't leave any of the Eastern Bloc countries.
The authorities said, "Well, if you wanna leave, you have to spy for us in Denmark."
And he refused. Absolutely refused.
Of course, once you applied, you're kept under observation.
So he had people on him all the time, 24/7.
And eventually he gave in.'
He made a deal with the devil and became a spy.
'Once he came to Denmark, he then reported himself to the authorities
and said, "This was the condition for me to leave Poland."
They threw him in a cell.'
Eventually they said, "You're allowed in, but you have to spy for us as well."
So he became a double spy.
'He would go to the Polish embassy and be interrogated,
and he would go to the Danish authorities,
and the same would happen there.'
He felt the pressure.
'He wanted to play music and he wanted to start his family,
and he just wanted normality.
I'm very impressed by what he's done, I have to say that.'
I'm always impressed with people who find unbelievable strength
to get through life, and create existence for themselves,
and I think that he's a prime example of that.
'But he carried this incredible anger for so many years,
and it didn't take much for it to come through.'
'He was good shouting.'
I just remember that I said, when I grew up, having kids, "Don't shout at them, Margaret.
Don't do that."
Because it's really... It's really tough.
'His father didn't show any emotions. He wasn't caring and kind.
And that has affected Peter.'
As a man, he is very... I was thinking in the beginning
when I met him, it was like,
he was like, like this, you know, very hard.
And that, of course, comes from his father's history.
'It's a strange thing to say, but because of his being angry,
I stayed out of the house a lot.
That meant I was out playing football.'
This is it, my first ever game was from here.
Back then, we did play 11-a-side, so it would've been... this size.
And I was probably that size.
'I joined this training session and I was not in control of myself,
the ball, and what I did to the other players around me.
The coach looked at me and he said, "Why don't you try going in goal?"
It worked for me, and I was in goal ever since.'
Goalkeeping is special. Incredible highs
and the incredible lows that football brings you.
As a keeper, you're responsible for both.
'I love the whole idea about just being the very, very last hope.'
(SPEAKING DANISH)
'I got picked for the school team.'
The teacher said, "You have a very, very big talent,
and I think that one day you will play for Denmark." "OK."
'"You have a talent. Talent is never enough.
You have to work really hard." I did.
I have to bring my mother into this. Her job was tough.
She was a nurse, looking after children in the cancer ward.
She's been the constant, the rock in my life.
There's a lot of her that I've inherited.
That discipline, the tough mentality,
that was all part of my education.
From the very, very beginning, I had this feeling of superiority.
No-one could beat me.
I wanted to play for Denmark.
I also started to dream about playing for Manchester United.
That was my dream.'
(CROWD CHEERING)
'Everybody else was supporting Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid.
For me, it was Man United. It's weird.
Weird that you don't know why, but I don't.
I was nine when I said I wanted to play for Man United.
A lot of kids say, "I wanna play for Manchester United,"
but how many end up doing it?
It was something I was dreaming about every day. Every single day.'
(PLAYS PIANO)
'But there's no doubt about what my father wanted me to do.'
My father wrote this. (PLAYS PIANO PIECE)
I haven't played this since I was a kid. Can't remember.
Can't remember. He wrote that.
The only thing that I've got from him, that he did himself.
'Of course, a dad is a really, really important person in your life.
I was the only son. Sons are supposed to walk in their father's footsteps.
(SPEAKING DANISH)
(APPLAUSE)
'It took years and years and years for my family to accept that
this is what I was gonna do, and there was nothing that they could do to stop me.
When I was 19, I signed semi-pros with a club called Hvidovre.'
(COMMENTATOR SPEAKING DANISH)
'At the time, I was being viewed as one of the greatest talents in Denmark.#
(SPEAKING DANISH)
'But at this point, I'm semi-professional.
I couldn't afford to live if I didn't work,
so I had a variety of different jobs.
It was kind of like a double life.
Kasper was born on November 5th, 1986,
which for me was a remarkable day.
I became a father, which was something I really, really wanted.
And I had just signed with Brondby, the first club ever in Denmark to go full-time.
I learned that day that my first game for Brondby
as a full-time professional
would be a quarter-final in the Champions League.
So, that was a big thing.
I was really happy to become a dad,
but I never felt that it was something that changed my cause or my thinking.'
'Peter was super young.'
you should see one of the pictures where he's holding Kasper,
it's like a child.
You know, he looks like a child.
And he probably also is a child emotionally, in many ways,
you know, at least a very young man.
And then he goes into this career that is so consuming.
'All your mental energy goes into that.
And maybe it's not so easy to be a father or a husband,
because you're so consumed with this.'
'So I met my ex-wife very young.
All of a sudden, we have a kid, we have an apartment,
we've got obligations.
But my focus was somewhere else, you know.
If you become a dad at 22 and then again at 25,
it's a bit early, especially for somebody who was in a hurry
to create a career in a sport that has an end date.
But there is no formula of what a good parent is.
Yes, at times I would have been away a lot and under pressure a lot,
and that would have, you know, some kind of reflection
on our family life.
I don't really have any regrets on my ability to be a parent.'
Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!
'I played in a team, but I also played an individual sport,
cos my position is so different.'
KASPER: 'Goalkeeping is a sport within the sport.
We wear a different kit, we have our own coach.'
The goalkeeper is the position of ultimate responsibility.
'It's very much a reactive position. There's no control.
So, how do you get control? I tried to impose myself.
When a striker would look up, I would already be in position.
And with that, I was just working on angles.'
If I had a striker coming at me this way, I would just be here.
He wouldn't be able to see the goal.
And that meant that, yeah, now you're trying to move and be clever, right.
I would just move with you.
Day after day after day, it became instinct, your position.
My performances got better, and it gave me so much more confidence.
I even became the penalty taker, and in one game I scored two.'
I remember as a kid going to see Brondby playing in the late '80s.
There was such an excitement around Peter Schmeichel and that team.
People were climbing the floodlights to get in
to have a view of this very enigmatic, very charismatic,
very different type of keeper.'
CROWD: Schmeichel! Schmeichel! Schmeichel!
'He came into the club,
he filled up the room, even when he was very young.
This is a character with presence, with attitude.
Everything should be perfect, and he demanded a lot from his teammates.
Sometimes you'd turn around and say, "Shut the fuck up, Peter, for fuck's sake!"
But we knew sometimes it helped us as well,
because if you're not 100% concentrated,
you knew that Peter would come after you.
That huge winning mentality was one of the key factors for Brondby,
and Peter demanded that.'
'He took over the Danish goalkeeping position in '88.
Schmeichel stood out.
He was the one that led from the front, or rather from the back.'
I was working at Frederiksberg Hospital,
and I just heard that on the television, that he has a debut.
"That's my brother!" I was so proud.
'I loved the Danish team, and it was a big, big thing for me
when I got involved.
Brian Laudrup always used to say that I fell in the pot of self-belief when I was a kid.
I never doubted myself.'
(HIGH-ENERGY DANCE MUSIC)
# Yeah yeah yeah
# We are Brondby!
'I had four very, very good and meaningful years with Brondby.
Success breeds confidence and more success.
But it wasn't enough.'
'The bar was not so high when he came to Brondby.
His bar was much higher, and the bar should be on the highest level you could ever see.
He wants to learn more, he wants to achieve more
and he wants to play for the biggest club in the world.'
(SPEAKING DANISH)
SIR ALEX: 'I was cautious about bringing a Danish goalkeeper in the English game,
because it's tough, you know.
My first experience was watching him in training with Brondby.'
(SHOUTING)
I hear this guy screaming and shouting, bawling,
and I says, "This is interesting."
And I watched him training, he was fantastic.
'He was a massive man. You know, he's 6ft 4in,
and his speed, his speed was tremendous.
He'd stretch himself every time someone would come through.'
The span, you know, he was like an aeroplane.
You know, he's out there, he's covering almost all the goal
the minute he starts coming out.
And I kept saying, "God, he'll fill my goal. They'll never get by him.'
He was a big lad, you know. Eats too much. (LAUGHS)
'I couldn't believe his age when they said he's 27.'
I says, "27? Where has he been?"
'Our goalkeeping coach Alan Hodgkinson said, "You need to sign him."'
'All of my life, I dreamt about this.
When I first arrived, I get into the chairman's office,
never met him before.
He said, "You come with me," and he took me to the museum.
He wanted to make sure that I understood the responsibility
that I was taking, becoming a Manchester United player.
I'm not just coming into a football club,
I'm coming into a place of history.
This is as special as I've dreamt about.'
'The definition of Manchester United is romance.
It's a romance that is just rooted in Matt Busby, the Busby Babes,
who were ready to dominate football for a decade at least,
who then, of course, suffered the tragedy in Munich in 1958,
and had to rebuild.
Became the first English team to win the European Cup.
United's history is inextricable to that.
It's romance, it's regeneration.
That's what made so many people fall in love with Manchester United.
But then the club can't live up to its own past.
And at that point, it's a club chasing past glories.'
(SPEAKING DANISH)
'My very, very first day at Manchester United...
you don't know where to look, you don't know who to talk to,
you don't know what to do, really.
They're walking in, one after one.
I'm like, 'My god, it's Mark Hughes!"
(GASPS) Brian Robson," one of my favourite players ever,
and he's actually sat next to me. I'm totally blown away.
STEVE BRUCE: 'When Peter walked into the building, the first thing straight away is,
you just go by the presence of him and the size of him.
There's no doubt he's got a character and a personality,
because he's a natural-born winner.'
'My first training session, Brian Kidd, the assistant manager, goes,
"Right, we'll do boxes.
Peter, do half-volleys."
And I'm like, "What?"'
"No, I'm not. I'm in the boxes."
"Oh, no, no, no, no," and they all go, "Oh, no, no,
we can't have goalkeepers in the boxes!"
That's what I've always done, so I just went and stood in the box.
'They're looking at each other, "What's going on?"
Eventually, it was so embarrassing, they had to start.'
'He wanted to train as an outfielder.
This is common stuff now, but this was 1991,
and that was completely new to British football,
that was completely new to the players at Manchester United.'
My philosophy was that you were part of the team.
They need to be with you, they need to know you, they need to trust you.
They've seen that I can stand up for myself, I know what I'm doing.'
He settled down great. They knew then they had a real goalkeeper.
(SPEAKING DANISH)
(REPLIES IN DANISH)
KASPER: 'I picked up English quite fast.
We never speak English at home, it's always Danish,
we've always celebrated Danish Christmas, had Danish traditions.'
'Manchester was where I grew up. I loved being there, I really did.'
'I was next door to Steve and Janet Bruce, which was fantastic,
because they were really helping us in settling into the UK.'
They had Amy and Alex, and that was fun, and a lot of people are like,
"How is it having a famous dad?"
I'd be like, "I've never tried anything else.
He's just my dad and it's just his friend, Steve!"
'Cos they're normal people as well.
Our life was just football. That was our whole identity.'
My dad was very concentrated. Everything was controlled.
KASPER: 'He was fiercely professional
and took his role and his position very seriously.
He was very strict with himself.
He had his routines, he had his ways of doing things,
and there was no deviating from that.'
Did he miss birthdays, did he miss Christmases, New Years,
school plays and all? Yeah, he did. I wouldn't change it for anything.
Hi Pete. I'll pick you up in about ten, 15 minutes, yeah?
Turn that camera off, I'm tired of that camera.
RADIO: 'We're looking for a team to go through and play in the final.
Which actress played the female lead in the 1980 film, the Blue Lagoon?'
Jane Fonda! No, no, it was...
Brooke Shields! Yes! 4-0!
No, no, you didn't — You're joking?
Jane Fonda you said first, then you changed answers.
No, no, no, I was just saying Jane Fonda's cousin!
'I grew up wanting to go to England.
I felt an alliance with England from way back.
I can't even remember when, but I always felt that I belonged here.
When I finally made the move to Man United, I just absolutely felt that I'm at home.'
My first four games, I kept clean sheets. I was so happy.
'The media started to take note.'
'Good save by Schmeichel!
'One of the saves of the season!'
'I joined Manchester United around that time.
Didn't really know much about him before he came.
I'd never seen that very unique style of goalkeeping.'
It was bizarre.
Some of the things that he did,
you'd not seen in English football before.
Throws that would be 70 or 80 yards.
And at the time felt transformational, it felt so different.
'It's come straight from the goalkeeper.'
'Coming into what was the old First Division,
I'm up against big, big, strong players,
at a time where it was OK to challenge the goalkeeper.
So, I had to learn how to deal with that.'
SIR SLEX: 'How he dominated the penalty box, that was his greatest strength.
Ball's getting tossed in, you say, "Where is he?"'
We depended on him.
He was a man mountain.
You feel like he's just gonna destroy everything in his path.
They're all ducking, the centre backs and the defenders.
They knew he wasn't gonna stop. He was fantastic at that.
'But then my teammates were really taking the piss out of me.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, just wait till you play Fash."
And I'm thinking, "Fash? Who the hell is this Fash?"
It turns out to be John Fashanu, who played for Wimbledon.
He was a guy who was trying to provoke you.
I'm going on the pitch, he's in my head.
He scored against me. I let him get to me.
It annoyed me. So I decided, "I'm gonna be like that.
I'm gonna be so arrogant that all of these players, they will hate me.
I'm gonna look through them.
I'm not even gonna acknowledge their presence.
Get you out of your concentration, make you angry.'
I want them to think about ME, and not ever having a chance to score a goal.
'Cantona! Oh, look at that. Good save, Schmeichel.'
When a striker is in front of him, it's not like being in front of another goalkeeper.
He's very different. He has something special.
'16 clean sheets in 29 games since the big Dane arrived.
Settled in really well at Old Trafford.'
'So when he brought me in,
Sir Alex said tha I was the final piece in the jigsaw.
Now we have the team that can win the league.'
'It's in there by Walters!
And now the title goes to Leeds United, without any doubt at all.
It's all up for Manchester United.'
'Not winning the league is, even to this day, incredibly disappointing.'
I will never get rid of that feeling.
We were so close, and we were so much better than everybody else,
but for some reason we just didn't have enough.
Coming off that season, I was mentally drained.
I was a little bit sick of football.
First of all, we didn't win the championship.
Secondly, with Denmark, we didn't qualify for the Euros 1992.
We lost out to Yugoslavia.
Of course, I was really disappointed,
but I just wanna not think about football
and I just want to have a break and then recover,
and be ready for the next season.'
(EXPLOSIONS AND FIRING)
TV: Concern is mounting that what used to be Yugoslavia
is careering towards civil war.'
'The rumours started to surface that the international community
would exclude Yugoslavia from everything.
They would be excluded from the Euros if that happened,
and it would be the runners-up from that group
who would then take their place, so we might be going to the Euros.'
And I have to be completely honest, I thought it was a terrible idea.
(SPEAKING DANISH)
'On the day that it was decided,
we actually went into camp straight away.
Our coach, Richard Moller Nielsen, he was very clear about our responsibilities here.
First and foremost, to the people of Yugoslavia,
they have been penalised, so we can't just go to the Euros and not try.'
'Peter and Richard had a very good relationship.
Peter is demanding from his teammates
and he could see that Richard was working very hard.
He knew everything about the opponent, and Peter liked that.'
'Peter's a person of deep loyalty, really, who,
if you do establish a bond with him, it's deeply important to him.
In some ways, Moller Nielsen, like Peter, was a bit of an outsider.
What Peter loved about Moller Nielsen was,
he shared the same drive.'
Where I was here, not wanting to play there, he got me over to here straight away.
(SPEAKING DANISH)
Quiet before the storm.
Denmark-England play in Frankfurt, where we are now.
The fact that my son is in it gives that true emotional feeling.
Hopefully, hopefully, fingers crossed, I get to say hello to him,
to Kasper, as well. That would be very nice.
'I have to do Talksport.
It's quite volatile, because it's my native country
and my adopted country.'
I don't wanna create stupid headlines.
'It's not going too well, because my brain is so tired.'
They've got me in a good time.
They want me to say a stupid thing. Well, they've got me now.
How are you? Thank you so much for coming.
These guys are following me. You don't mind them filming you?
You're... Fucking hell, you love some fucking exposure, don't you?
(LAUGHTER) By you?
Would it be a shock result if Denmark beat England today?
I think that, that's a big word,
cos that's saying that Denmark's not a very good team,
and I think we are a very good team.
It wouldn't be a shock result. It'd be a big result.
I was wondering if we could get a photo by the Hull flag.
Alright. Enjoy today, alright? Thank you.
No fighting.
It's a bit early to have a beer, isn't it?
I guess if you've gotta go through ten litres before the game,
you've gotta start early.
FANS: Come on, England!
I do a lot of post-match interviews with players. I never do this.
(BOTH LAUGH)
Well played... Oh. There you go!
So, not disappointed at all?
I think there's always a tinge of disappointment when we don't win.
Peter, a big night for Denmark.
Did you surprise yourselves a bit here in Malmo?
No, I wouldn't say that we surprised ourselves.
I'm a bit disappointed we didn't win the game.
When we played that game against England, we were the better team.
'We're looking at each other, thinking, "We might just be able to do something here."'
We'd been together for about six years.
We knew that we'd got a good team.
And suddenly the belief was starting to change a little bit.
The confidence starts to build up.'
So we go to Stockholm and play the second game against Sweden,
and we create so many chances, and we miss every single one of them.
'They have one chance and score.
And I remember I was sat there in the dressing room,
so disappointed and so angry,
and none of us felt like speaking to the media.'
'We were under pressure, the manager was under pressure,
so it was a very difficult situation we were in.'
But of course if we beat France in the last game,
we then would go to the semi-final.
'They were the pre-tournament favourites.
I remember before the game, they come up to us and say,
"Go easy on us, cos we've got to play Holland next."'
I just remember feeling, "My god, we cannot let these guys win!"
'And from that moment on, everybody believed that we could do something here.
And you see Denmark become red and white, you've got flags everywhere.
Everything was red and white. It was unbelievable.
For me, playing for Denmark, representing your country,
is just the pinnacle.' (CROWD CHEERING)
'That was the ultimate.'
'When my father passed away and I went through all his papers and everything,
I actually realised
that I was born Polish,
that I was a Polish citizen until I think about six years old,
when he became a Danish citizen.
Up until that point, I was actually a Polish citizen.'
It's weird, because I am half-Polish.
I am, but I have no relationship to Poland whatsoever.
Don't know any family members.
I knew a couple, they've all passed away.
But it's really weird, because you've...
There's half the family probably still living on
that I don't know about.
Are you a little Polish dog?
Are you?
You're German, aren't you? Born in Germany.
And he's got a Dutch footballer's name,
the best Dutch footballer ever.
That's funny, isn't it?
Holland and Germany, in terms of football,
they just hate each other, don't they?
So we named a German dog after a Dutch superstar.
(LAUGHS)
Eh?
'So, Holland, the holders, and the most successful nation
in the history of the Euros,
bid to join Germany in the final
that most of Europe wants to see.'
'The game we played against Holland could have gone either way.
We were 1-0 up and 2-1 up. The game finished 2-2.
I'm gonna face five penalties. And I looked forward to it.'
It's part of the game, and there's no need for me not to enjoy that.
But as a goalkeeper in a penalty shootout,
you have absolutely zero control.
So, how do you get control? I said to myself,
"OK, on the first one I'm gonna go there,
on the second one, I'm gonna go there."
I mean, it was an instinct, you know, what pops into my head.
'I could decide left, right, left, right, or all five to the left.'
It would always be random, which means if I get beaten,
I got beaten by my own choice, they haven't outsmarted me.
(REF BLOWS WHISTLE)
Isn't that amazing? Schmeichel has saved it.
A vital save for Denmark.
I guessed right. Not guessed, because it was a choice.
'My choice was right. I'm in control.
JENSEN: 'No other Danish team has been in the final, in the World Cup or the Euros. Never.
We made history, and we celebrated with loads of beers.
And I remember, like, five o'clock in the morning,
sitting around a piano, where Peter was playing, and we were singing.
The manager came down,
because he was starting to have his breakfast, and he came and said,
"Listen, guys. You need to go up and sleep now,
because we've gotta train in four hours' time.
And you have to play the cup final against Germany four days after that.'
(WHISTLING AND SHOUTING)
Jack Charlton, nobody gives Denmark any chance at all of winning this match.
How do you feel about that?
Well, logically, I would say exactly the same.
'When we get to the final, the kit manager asked me into the kit room,
and he shows me the shirt.'
He says, "They want you to play in that tonight."
He thinks it's a terrible shirt, and I'm looking at this shirt,
I'm thinking, "That's the most beautiful shirt I've ever seen in my life,
there's no way I'm NOT gonna play the final in that."
'I felt that gave me some extra powers.
I knew I had to play one of my best games.'
Germany were the world champions.
They are fantastic.
They came flying for the first 20 minutes.
'It was just one chance after the next.'
It was relentless, but we're riding out the storm.
'And then we score.'
'A terrific goal by Jensen!'
(CROWD CHEERING AND WHOOPING)
'I scored a stunning goal, but if we didn't have Peter in goal,
we would have lost the game by two or three goals.
And in the second half, when Germany start to do everything,
Peter came out with saves I've never seen before.
It was like Peter had eight arms, like an octopus.'
BRIAN MOORE: 'Vilfort... It's in! They've scored another one!
And Denmark are now just one short stepping stone
from the greatest night in their football history.'
'We knew that he was a world-class goalkeeper.
Sometimes you need to play the right day to show it, and he did that.
That was the moment. It was unbelievable.'
Final whistle blows. Weird... What do you do?
How do you celebrate that?
'I am honest, I haven't got a clue what happened after that.
Honestly.
Everything was just so unreal. Just so unreal.'
I mean, less than two weeks prior to that,
we were not even in there,
and then we take the place from a football team
that's already in the hotel.
'So, all of a sudden, they're kicked out, and we are in their rooms.
It was for them as well.'
'Peter Schmeichel, dare I say it,
the most popular man in Denmark now.'
(ROCK MUSIC)
(SINGING AND CHANTING)
(SIRENS)
(SPEAKING DANISH)
'I got elevated into another status from winning that.'
'It was the pinnacle of what Danish football and Danish sports had ever achieved.
It wouldn't have been possible without Schmeichel
playing what was just an absolute masterpiece
of a goalkeeping performance.
Took him to a level that we hadn't really seen before.'
(PLAYS POIGNANT PIANO PIECE)
'Playing for Denmark was always a big dream of mine.
Walking out, hearing the national anthem was just incredible.
We had this burning desire to be successful,
in spite of being a small country.
And I was in the team for 14 years
and I loved every minute of it.
That never goes away.
It's with me very, very often, because it really meant something to people here.'
We showed the world that it can be done.
We showed people in Denmark this can be done.
(FINAL CHORD)
He's come back a winner of a European final.
I mean, he's buzzing. He's buzzing. I think that helps him.
I think that no matter where we're gonna be playing here,
we're ready for it.
'Football's new Premier League has finally been given the go-ahead.'
The league replaces the First Division and will start this August.
'The Premier League was different.
The game really opened up to television money,
and in many ways, it was built for Manchester United.
Psychologically, it was a good way to be able to draw the line
under what had happened the previous season.
It was a useful tool for Ferguson.
£Let's be the first winners of this new competition."'
'There was a really good atmosphere in the dressing room.'
And there was a lot of optimism. And then we start.
'We're beaten twice and we have one draw.'
'They were in the bottom three after three games.
All the old questions about United are back.'
'But there was no panic.'
The manager, he always said, "The season starts at Easter,
this is when it really counts.
If you're gonna make mistakes and lose games, we do it early."
'October was a miserable month. Three defeats
and four games without scoring a goal.
Peter Schmeichel said, "If we don't buy a striker,
we're not going to win anything."'
'When Eric was signed, it was one of those moments where things changed.'
NORTHCROFT: 'He was the key figure for Leeds the previous season.
Somehow Alex Ferguson signed him.'
CANTONA: 'This club was special. I know it was special.
To come to United, you need to be good.
You need to have a strong personality,
to handle the pressure of this club.'
Because some players cannot.
'Eric was different to anything that we'd ever seen in English football.'
INTERVIEWER: Was it hard to adapt to English football when you first arrived?
No. No.
No, because English football has to adapt to me. (LAUGHS)
'Cantona. Oh, that is gorgeous.
And Denis Irwin's in again!
Eric Cantona on a different level!'
I loved the fact that he was different. He made a massive impact.
Now we can win the league.
'I roomed with Eric for a long, long time.
'For five years we shared a room, so we had a very good relationship.
He's interested about many things.'
He has a strong point of view, and also an open mind.
'Peter took care of me. He's a real leader.
Strong physically, strong mentally. He has a real personality.'
So he's a winner and a leader. Take everybody with him.
(LAUGHS) To the top of the hill.
(REF BLOWS FINAL WHISTLE)
'Manchester United are the champions of England.'
(CROWD CHANTING) # Glory, glory, Man United
(EXCITED CHATTER)
INCE: We are the fucking bollocks, aren't we?
(KIDS TALKING EXCITEDLY)
And what's your name? Um, Kasper Peter Schmeichel.
'So, we win the league. Hadn't won it for 26 years.'
Fucking hell, polish it up.
'Fantastic.'
It looks fucking worse. Don't spoil it.
Well done, lads.
Denis? Denis...
This is good in here!
(LADS SHOUTING)
(EXCITED CHATTER)
'Now we have to go back and do it again.'
My attitude was, once you win something, it doesn't matter.
Shelve it. Store it away.
We have to go on and on and on.
'The champions, Manchester United, they are most emphatically the team
the others will have to catch.
'We always knew what the requirements were,
and Sir Alex never wavered from that.'
You have to win the Premier League. That's it.
You have to perform at your highest level.
If not, somebody else will take your place.
You went into the first-team dressing room as an 18, 19-year-old,
and you were almost like you were surrounded by maniacs.
'Peter was an immense character
and you realised what a massive personality he was,
not just on the pitch, but also in the changing room
and on the training ground.'
Make sure we start right. Fucking our day today.
Come on, Gaz, are we ready?
Don't fuck about, let's get out there.
Gary, concentrate well today.
NEVILLE: 'They were aggressive, all front-foot,
they were all intense, they were all demanding figures.
They were ferocious with it.
Nothing else you were gonna face in your life
was as ferocious as Keane and Ince and Hughes and Schmeichel.
Obviously, Sir Alex Ferguson, the boss, as well.'
Hey!
'Peter was extremely demanding.
Mistakes couldn't happen.
I've never seen anybody hate conceding a goal
more than Peter Schmeichel.'
I always liked to see some part of myself in my players.
I see a big part in Peter. He's a winner.
NEVILLE: If I made a mistake in front of him, I mean,
it was as if you'd basically stole the handbag off his grandma,
you know what I mean? It was like a crime.
So I felt like I got the brunt of his big Danish voice.
You'd now call it bullying, but when I look back now,
it was just a harsh, intense environment,
an environment where you just had an unbelievable winning mentality driven through it.
'When they all started to enter the team,
you have a pretty fair idea of what it's like to play for United.
You need to be mentally very, very strong.
So, you've gotta toughen them up.
I know it sounds so old-fashioned when I say that,
but it builds character and standards.
If you can't deal with instant adversity,
if you can't deal with criticism,
then there is no place in that team for you. No place.'
I've got to ask you, how's your temper?
Because Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister, for years,
have just... I mean, their ears must be bashed with it!
I know. But that's mostly part of the act.
It's an act, is it? Well, no, you can't call it an act.
'I mean, there's no hard feelings between us.
I say it was an act, and I always said, "Well, I had the ability
to step out of that character when the game was over."
That's just an illusion. You cannot jump in and out of that character,
cos it's difficult to bring it on for 90 minutes.'
'He never showed emotions back then.'
Anger, he would show anger, but he wouldn't show emotions and feelings,
and I think for him, that would be a sign of weakness,
and we were not meant to see him be weak.
Like, that was not him.
'If my dad lost a game, none of us wanted to drive with him. (LAUGHS)
You would want to drive in another car.
I remember one game where he was very angry, and we were flying home.
It was not very comfortable!'
We just had to get home and then pray to God we live. (LAUGHS)
KASPER: 'Having been in the same profession as him now for 23 years,
I really have a very broad understanding of his behaviours.'
Constantly assessed and under pressure to perform.
Football does that to you.
'The work rate, the effort, what it takes to get there.
They aren't always traits conducive to being the best person
around other people.'
My dad was quite uncompromising, quite regimented,
whereas I'm a bit more relaxed when it comes to the routines.
'My mum probably has given me the more easy-going nature
of being with people, being more social,
and not wanting to miss out.'
'He can seem to be very arrogant, and he has been,
but I just learned that arrogance covered often shyness.
He's more shy than arrogant, if you ask me.'
It's so many years ago since I've played that I can look back
and think, 'Oh my god.
Pete, for Christ's sake, why were you like that?
That's embarrassing.'
But I know deep down
that if I hadn't been like that,
it wouldn't have happened for me.
I had to be like that, in order to be the best of the best.
The best teams, they're always a reflection of the manager.
We reflected Sir Alex Ferguson, to a T.
He was absolutely perfect for a guy like me.
Yes, he's intense, but I was intense.
He was demanding.
If you are ambitious, you want a demanding boss.
And what was brilliant about it was if he really went off on
one of his tangents, you could actually argue with him.
He was looking for a reaction, and he'd be disappointed
if you didn't come back at him, showing that you cared.
When he came to Liverpool, there was a slight change in his demeanour.
'Guys, it's fucking Liverpool next. Be ready.'
This particular game, we were three-nil up very, very quickly,
and we could have been five and six-nil up, easily.
But it was kind of like we stopped playing. They scored.
Three-one, and three-two, just before half-time.
And I felt that I kept the team in the game in the second half.
They were bombarding us. They equalised.
So, after the game, of course he was disappointed, and angry.
He blamed me.
The reason that I lost my temper with him,
the third goal they scored,
is it's the kind of cross that he was coming for
every day in his life.
To my mind, it should've been— it was his ball.
That's what angered me.
I felt that it was definitely not my fault, and I reacted to it.
We had a face-to-face argument.
I don't like to speak about this kind of thing.
It's all between us, you know?
I understand that the people want to know many things, you know?
But me, I'm not the kind of guy who will say these kinds of things.
I wish there'd just been a camera to film it,
because I honestly cannot explain in words —
I mean, that's the most ferocious argument I have ever seen
in my life, between manager and player,
or between player and player.
I've never seen anything like it. I thought they were gonna fight.
Genuinely, I thought they were gonna fight.
I saw the manager have a go at many players over 20 years,
saw him come in at half-time and tear people to shreds,
including myself. But I— This one was Peter going for it full-on,
and the manager going for it full-on, and thinking,
'What the fucking hell is this?'
Absolutely madmen. Vicious. It was evil.
I just lost it.
I said things about my teammates that I shouldn't have done.
You don't do that. That's almost like treachery.
It's not my job as a teammate to criticise other players.
That's maybe my biggest regret. Definitely crossed a line.
I crossed a line with him, said things to him.
And I can never allow to lose my control.
I said, 'You're finished.' I had my shower, I went on the bus.
I was fuming, I was fuming when I got back home.
I told my agent, 'He sacked me, and you've gotta get me somewhere else.'
I'm ready to go anywhere, you know.
So, I get in Monday morning, I go up to his office.
He says, 'I have to let you go.' I said, 'That's fine.
I have no problem with that.'
At this point, I'm not even disappointed.
You know, I'm not, because I'm like that as well.
I'm thinking, 'I'm not having this,' you know.
He called a team meeting, and he went absolutely berserk on the team.
He left, and I said, 'Guys, I really want to apologise for my behaviour.
It was out of order. I'm really, really sorry.'
And then he never sacked me.
It was never, ever, ever mentioned again.
He told my agent that he stood outside the door,
and he heard my apology.
I don't know why he was surprised, but he said,
'No, OK, that's fine,' you know. 'I'll keep him.' (LAUGHS)
I was thinking, 'How the flipping heck are we gonna get out of this?'
(LAUGHS) And he come out and apologised.
'Thank Christ,' I said to myself. (LAUGHS)
That season, Manchester United became one of the best teams
that's ever won the Premier League. They won the double.
That took the team to another level.
I mix all the seasons together. It all becomes a blur.
We were setting standards for the rest of the teams in England.
It was what I'd been dreaming about since I was a kid.
When you sat in that dressing room and you looked around
at the players, you were thinking, 'We're gonna win everything.'
There is this idea that we didn't get along.
I was not there to have friends, I was there to win.
Everybody was there for the same reason.
Yes, we could have arguments. It's totally irrelevant.
We were there to win. We were greedy.
We wanted to win everything.
That was a common ground that we shared.
(CROWD CRY OUT)
You kind of remember the ones you don't win,
when you came away with nothing.
That's what you used.
That's a tool you have to use to become better.
Your job is to win.
Every time you play, you put everything you have on the line.
(CHATTER)
(CAMERAS CLICKING)
PRESS: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
We've invited you down today to announce that Peter Schmeichel
has indicated that he wishes to retire from English football
at the end of the present season.
I've asked Manchester United to release me
at the end of this current season,
which they have generously agreed to do,
and for that I am truly grateful.
It is important now that I'm now allowed to concentrate totally
on the rest of this season.
I've had a fantastic career with Manchester United,
and I owe it to the club, players, and the fans to do whatever I can do
to finish on a high and winning note.
There's no doubt about burnout,
probably also being a condition of stress.
At the end of the World Cup in '98...
..we get knocked out in the quarter finals.
So, I phone Sir Alex and, 'When do you want me back?'
and he says, 'I want you back tomorrow.'
And I'm thinking, 'My god. I'm done for.
I've not had a break for, like, four years.
I'm 35 years of age. How long can I do this for?' you know?
It's one thing being a good goalkeeper,
but being number one for a Premier League club,
being number one for your country, that's not about goalkeeping only.
That's mentality.
A mistake costs your team, which means you have to be perfect.
And no one's perfect,
but you have to be as close to perfect
in every single action you make.
If you haven't stood there, you don't actually know.
Probably bigger pressure than anyone would ever understand.
NORTHCROFT: Having played at this high level for such a long time,
for the first time,
Peter really felt signs of vulnerability as a goalkeeper.
In modern football, there would've been psychologists,
there would've been performance specialists.
This was an era where footballers were supposed to be indestructible,
where if you played for a club like Manchester United,
you admitted no sign of weakness.
And he'd always been that player.
I always promised myself,
'If I feel that I'm not up for it, I have to do something.'
I came up with the solution of this being my last year
playing for Man United, because I can't carry on doing this.
And I came up with that decision all by myself.
Never spoke to anyone.
With maturity, I look back and think, 'How stupid is that?'
You've gotta speak to people. They will tell you that,
'Hey, you're not in a fit state to make such a big decision.'
But they had to let me go for nothing.
That's what I asked for.
It wasn't that easy, but they accepted it in the end.
Alex, is this a sad day for the club in general,
and I suppose yourself, after all these years?
Yeah. Oh, he's been incredible.
He's without question the best goalkeeper in my playing career,
or management, managerial career, ever, to my mind.
Right, OK, thanks very much.
Fergie didn't put up a fight at all.
He always said, 'I could see the determination in his eyes,
so I didn't wanna fight it.'
So, I had this meeting with him saying,
'This is gonna be my last season.'
He said, 'Make sure it's a good one.'
The next step was to win Europe.
If we just keep winning Premier Leagues, we're stagnating.
We have to win in Europe.
NORTHCROFT: Alex Ferguson was that manager who'd done everything,
but hadn't won the European Cup.
It became an obsession, and it became United's quest.
And the traditions of that club demand,
'We have to win the European Cup,'
and that's where United found themselves.
COMMENTARY: It's Manchester United and Inter Milan,
the pick of the week's European quarter finals.
The team they had was just incredible,
and they absolutely hammered us.
Zanetti for Inter Milan.
Kept out at the near post by Schmeichel, who reclaims it.
..here on Stam. Schmeichel's made a save.
It's Colonnese with a chance!
Blocked On the line by Henning Berg!
And he's got in a cross, and Zamorano has a chance!
(SOFT DRAMATIC MUSIC)
Something like... he did that all the time.
I remember we played Everton and their centre forward going through.
Brilliant save from Schmeichel.
And he came out screaming at him, 'Argh!'
Got the fright of his life. (LAUGHS)
And there's no way past the big blond giant.
He was famous at spreading himself, you know. And he was huge.
(LAUGHS) I don't know understand it myself.
High jump, you have Fosbury.
Dick Fosbury, his incredible Fosbury flop.
And the Panenka.
But now all goalkeepers, they arrive like this, like monster.
The Schmeichel. Schmeichel.
Peter created something.
(SOFT DRAMATIC MUSIC)
COMMENTARY: Fantastic stop by Peter Schmeichel!
And how critical a moment in the quarter final
will that turn out to be?
So, they absolutely hammered us, but we won it two-nil.
After Inter, we get drawn against Juventus,
and Juventus was a big test.
Two Italian teams that in all the seasons prior to that,
we would have lost.
(PLAYERS CHEERING)
Peter, congratulations. You've made the Champions League final.
Yeah, I mean... I couldn't have dreamt of this.
In the Premier League, Arsenal are the defending champions.
We're neck and neck all the time.
(TENSE STRING MUSIC)
This rivalry between us and Arsenal is when I had the most fun.
Because we came out on top.
And to come out on top against that kind of quality,
that's just brilliant.
Sometimes they stepped over the line, yes, but it added to football.
It made football important.
Everything we did that year was earned.
Nothing was given to us.
We never stopped believing.
We carried on until the referee said the game's finished.
And all of a sudden, three more games, three more wins,
and we would have an unbelievable season, you know.
Three more wins, more wins.
And so the dream became a possibility.
COMMENTARY: Manchester United on the verge of true sporting greatness.
Peter Schmeichel coming out for his last league game in England.
He's taken goalkeeping on to another level, I think.
Once we got to those three games, for me,
there's absolutely no doubt about the first two.
There's no way we were not gonna win against Tottenham. No way.
(CHEERING)
It's gone right to the final whistle on the final day
of the league season,
and Manchester United are champions
for the fifth time in seven seasons.
The first leg of this astonishing treble is in place.
(PLAYERS CHEERING)
Two more games.
There's no way we were gonna lose the FA Cup final.
So, the question mark was,
having played Bayern twice already that season
and drawn both of the games, would we come out winning that game?
COMMENTARY: United know that Bayern Munich are giants,
three-times winners of the European Cup,
chasing a treble themselves.
Manager Alex Ferguson won't name his starting line-up until tomorrow.
Once certainty, though, is Peter Schmeichel,
the United keeper in his final appearance, will captain the side.
When I was young, I was seriously nervous before games.
My first game for Brondby was quarter final
in the Champions League,
and I'm actually hoping that the bus would crash
so we didn't have to play this game.
Such a big game, and there'd be more people in the stadium
than I've ever played in front of before, and I was so nervous.
I went outside myself and looked at myself, and I said,
'Pete, all of your life you've been dreaming about these games,
and you're afraid.
You should be enjoying it. This is fantastic.'
And I decided I wouldn't be nervous anymore.
From that moment on, I was never nervous.
(SOFT DRAMATIC MUSIC)
What is it inside of me that enables me to do something like that?
It takes an incredible amount of strength.
I don't know where that strength came from, but it was there.
Champions League final. You are right at the pinnacle.
Everyone in the world are watching what you're doing,
and I don't think you can get any higher than that.
Why be scared of that?
You're there because you love it, so enjoy it.
But too easy for Bayern Munich.
Their players were simply too good, and they were too disciplined.
One-nil. They completely controlled the game.
But they had the opportunities, and they never took them.
They hit the post, and they hit the bar.
What do you wanna know?
One that hits the post, I'm a little bit in doubt if it's going in.
The Carsten Jancker one on the bar, that's, honestly,
I know it's not going in.
We were riding our luck a little bit. Three minutes left.
And then we get the corner kick, so I know this is the time.
The big goalie's coming up! Peter Schmeichel is forward.
Go up to create havoc and confusion.
You do everything that you can in order to win.
It comes from the manager. I had no authority whatsoever.
In towards Schmeichel!
He got a touch on the ball.
His head wasn't big enough to head it towards goal.
Come for Dwight Yorke. Cleared. Giggs with the shot!
Sheringham! But then we got the goal out of it.
(CHEERING)
As I'm running back. The adrenaline, it makes me breathless.
So, I'm now trying to focus again,
'Get your pulse down, focus, concentrate.'
I'm talking to myself, I'm telling myself all that,
you know.
And all I can think about is, 'Please don't shoot.
Please. Because I am not capable of saving anything.'
Beckham. Into Sheringham!
And Solskjaer has won it!
We score.
And then...
Then I go blank.
(CHEERING)
Then I don't remember anything. So, don't ask about anything after that.
(LAUGHS)
The best last line of defence that Manchester United have ever had
will perform his last act as a Manchester United player.
(CHEERING)
I tell you, I'm fucking sick of celebrations.
(LAUGHTER)
(CHATTER)
Kasper was crying when the game was done, and I was like,
'Why are you crying?'
And he was like, 'Well, this is the last game.
You know, Dad is not a United player after this.'
So, 'OK, that's quite big.'
Like, 'Fuck this is over.'
Like, 'He's not gonna play for Man United again.'
I never thought about that being my last game for Man United.
I wasn't thinking about beyond the game at all.
I was just focused on my first Champions League final.
I didn't wanna bring all that sentimental stuff into it.
I said, 'This is gonna be the most important game
you're ever gonna play.'
Like I said to myself with every game I play.
You never looked ahead. Never. Win the game, move on.
I woke up and I wasn't a Man United player anymore.
Of course it was a massive mistake leaving Manchester United.
Why would you leave Manchester United?
Why didn't I just go in to the manager and say,
'I can still do a really good job for you,
but I don't think I can play every game'?
I was too proud.
I thought that he would see that as weakness.
He wanted strong personalities, armoured people,
nothing could penetrate them.
I'm very sure that I was wrong.
I think he would have respected me, and he would have helped me.
There was something in me that stopped me and said,
'No, I've made my decision.'
He was a great player for me, a great character,
and a person I really admired.
When you look at the hundred-year history of Manchester United,
Peter Schmeichel is right at the top of that, you know.
After Peter, that was when the real problems started.
I tried— I don't know how many goalkeepers I tried.
I became famous for trying goalkeepers. (LAUGHS)
At no point did I speak to any other club
before the Champions League final.
I wanted to play a hundred per cent fair with Man United.
So, when I played that last game, I didn't know where I was going.
I went to Sporting Lisbon, in Portugal.
I'd been in Lisbon before, but not with the view of living there,
and I fell in love with the place straight away.
What I've seen so far is very talented players,
and, you know, very inexperienced.
But they can play.
I mean, it was obvious today that there was definitely potential
of creating some— a team that can at least compete for the trophies.
I enjoyed my years, much as we won the championship,
but it was so different to what I was used to.
I mean, we were playing for half-empty stadiums,
and I wasn't happy.
My god, I missed the Premier League.
NEWS: The big Dane's back into English football.
After two seasons in the sun with Sporting Lisbon,
he wanted one last chance in the Premiership.
He just hopes everyone at Old Trafford will understand.
I didn't have a problem with Peter leaving Manchester United.
I wondered why, because he was still relatively young for a goalkeeper,
but he'd made his mind up,
and you were never gonna change his mind.
The disappointment I had was, you know,
when you play for United, you don't go and play for City.
We've lost a great goalkeeper, the greatest in the world,
you've just won the treble,
you've popped off and had a little bit of sun, then you've come back
and played in Manchester, and played in Birmingham.
He could've carried on playing for United.
An elderly woman who was stood behind the goal,
Manchester City supporter, right, she was shouting right in my face,
'Let's see where your fucking loyalties are today, Schmeichel!'
Christ, you know. What was going on here?
It was a really, really weird day for me.
Giggs! Saved valiantly by Schmeichel.
Well, the United hero is a City hero today.
Three-one winners! What a day for Peter Schmeichel.
I know we won, I know it counts towards the record
that I've never lost a Manchester derby,
but it's absolutely meaningless to me.
Sometimes you don't think everything through.
I didn't think that I was gonna play against Manchester United,
I didn't think what that was gonna be like, until it happened.
Oh my god, I hated it.
NEWS: After a month of soul searching,
to make what he says is the most difficult decision of his life,
Schmeichel will be retiring at the end of the season.
NEWS 2: So, this Sunday sees Peter the Great hang up his gloves,
only a week after showing us
why he's probably the Premiership's greatest ever keeper.
Diouf! Oh, Schmeichel!
That's one of the great saves of his career, in his penultimate game.
But will the end be an emotional moment?
I don't know, my wife keeps asking me that.
She says I'm very cold.
(STAMMERS)
You know, you live a life where you're under pressure all the time.
Whatever decisions you make in your life,
whatever decisions you make in the game,
you have to live with that.
I'm not gonna be too emotional about that on Sunday.
I don't think I'll be thinking about it a lot.
When I decided to retire from football, I was more than ready.
I wasn't happy.
My father was very, very proud of me playing for Man United.
He made sure to tell me as well.
But towards the end of my career at United,
it was also a period where his drinking,
which we were not aware of, became more and more apparent.
He told me that he was an alcoholic for 40 years.
It's an illness, and many, many people are suffering from it.
In a family, when there is an abuser,
you always call it something else.
And his excuse was that he had this tough background.
It's his childhood, or blah-blah-blah.
In the run-in to the treble,
that was the first time I really saw how bad it had got.
You didn't think he could get any worse, but he did, every day.
When I moved to Portugal,
very, very quickly my mother came there,
because you can say she escaped.
We took a lot of professional advice.
They said that you can't do anything.
It's gotta be up to the person who's got the problem.
You have to isolate the person. That's so, so tough.
It's so difficult.
So, me and the family just moved to Portugal.
We didn't give him any phone numbers, no addresses, no nothing.
One day, I'm walking my dog in the garden,
and it's pitch black, I've got a torchlight in my hand.
I get a phone call on my mobile phone,
and it's my then wife.
She says, 'Your father is at the gate.'
And I'm like, 'What?'
Somehow, he's managed to book a flight to Lisbon,
then stumble into a taxi,
telling the guy to take him to my house.
He didn't have an address, and the guy knew where I lived,
which was scary.
And then he ended up there. He was very drunk, by the way.
And I'm still holding this torchlight as I open the door,
and he's there. It's not something I thought about.
I was just straight into his eyes, kind of, the ultimate humiliation.
And I ask him, 'What do you want?'
'I wanna come in, I wanna see my family.'
'You can't. We don't want you. You have to go.'
After ten minutes, he left.
I'm stood there, haven't got a clue what I've just done.
My instinct was I had to do that,
but I didn't know what the consequences would be.
He went back to Copenhagen,
and from that plane he went directly into treatment.
He lived 20 years after that, and never had a drink again.
Strength. The Schmeichel strength. (LAUGHS)
He became clean, he mended the bridges,
built new relationships with everyone in the family.
But he didn't wanna talk to me.
And it turned out it was the torchlight,
that I humiliated him so much with that torchlight,
and he couldn't forgive me.
So, one day I said to my mother,
'Tell him that torchlight saved his life.
That humiliation was the final push.'
A couple of hours later, my father rang me,
and he apologised to me,
and we became really, really close in those last 20 years.
My dad has different characters.
He had a character when he was a professional footballer,
and he has a character as a grown man,
and the last ten years he's got a new character.
So, there's loads of different versions of him,
and I love the version he is now the most.
He's become very calm and happy, and just he's present.
He's much more present than he used to be.
Once you finish football, you can relax.
He's quite rightly begun to enjoy life a lot more than he did
when he played.
I'm very conscious about giving up control.
If we'd done this documentary five years ago,
I would've been all over everything you said.
I've improved on that,
because I hated always trying to be in control of every situation,
'cause it's stressful.
It's stressful, not only for yourself,
but for your surroundings,
that every little thing's got to be in a certain way.
With me, it's a big, big challenge, to realise that always being
in control doesn't make me a better person.
It's been important. It's not important anymore.
I think having met Laura, it's helped me a lot.
She's not somebody that you control, definitely not.
There's a lot of things that I am able to do today,
the way I'm able to think, the way I'm able to behave,
that I would have loved to have had earlier in my life,
and also in my playing career.
But for me to do what I had to do back then,
for some reason I had to be like that.
I always saw myself as him on the pitch and him outside the pitch.
I'm not sure that I'm completely right about that.
I think they were probably a little bit closer
than I would have liked.
But I'm definitely making a bigger gap now.
It's funny, because I never seen him play, I never seen him on TV.
When I met him, I just saw this super happy, funny man.
So, when I see a clip of him playing football, I'm like,
'Why are you yelling so much? Why are you so angry?' (LAUGHS)
You know, 'What's going on? What did he say?'
You know, because I don't know that side of him.
She was that person who wandered down the shopping street
on June 27th, walked into the town hall square,
200,000 people there, and thinking, 'Why are they here?'
You know, when they looked up to the balcony, where I am,
with the European Championship trophy.
She's totally oblivious to that. She knew nothing about football,
which has been absolutely fan— She knows everything about football now.
It's been an important development for me to meet somebody
who didn't know about football,
who was introducing me to other values in life,
and other ways of being,
and other ways of being around people as well.
I'm going on tour with a band that I've literally just stumbled into,
so I'm now gonna do what my father used to do, go out and play music.
They used to have a sound guy who called the genre of country...
..horse jazz. Horse jazz, yeah.
(LAUGHS) Horse jazz. So, we're moving into horse jazz.
You heard it here first. (LAUGHS)
Peter said, 'Well, I just wrote this new song, could we try that?'
So yeah, this is— We're trying it.
It's the first time we play it.
It's very new. We never heard it before.
He's a childhood hero, yeah?
Then all of a sudden, we're on the same team.
That was pretty mad to start with.
Before it was like, 'Oh my god.
He's the captain of the national team.'
Yeah. He's really nice. Not like in the TV from the '90s.
They are professional musicians,
they have a completely different idea about time.
They'll arrive, yeah, they will come and rehearse and all that,
but if you say ten o'clock, it's not necessarily ten o'clock.
It's definitely not my ten o'clock.
But that's two different worlds.
It's challenging me on my OCD.
It's a little bit of—
Yeah, it's a big challenge.
Now my sporting discipline, and that, kind of,
strict personality, is calling for us to play this again.
Yes. 'Cause—
Agreed.
# I see you...
Yeah. I fucked it up.
Start again? Let's start again.
But, you know, funny, because football never really left me.
I have to be honest,
I realised that his football has been more important
than my football.
(SPEAKING DANISH)
I looked up to my dad, so I copied him a lot.
(SPEAKING DANISH)
(CHEERS)
I was volatile in my determination to win, to be the best.
Regardless of what it was.
Whether it was a game in the backyard,
or if it was a game of Monopoly, or whatever it was, I wanted to win.
(SPEAKING DANISH)
I didn't save that one.
As a kid, you're a sponge.
You're taking everything in all the time.
MARGARETHE:
Sometimes we had training, and the kids were allowed to come.
And Kasper was, and my son, Raphael, were there. They played together.
My son didn't care. But we could feel the personality of Kasper.
He had a goal, you know.
He wanted to become like his father. We could feel that.
The Barclays Premier League has a sixth different winner,
and no one saw them coming.
Leicester are smiling, and the whole world smiles too.
Bring on the champions.
That day at the King Power Stadium, when he lifted that trophy,
that's the best Premier League win I've had.
For the first time...
..it was emotional.
And in all of this, I was more proud and more happy
than when I was one of the players receiving this trophy.
I don't understand that feeling,
because all of my life since I was a kid,
I dreamt about that.
That was my driving thing, that was my energy source.
So, how can somebody come into my life
and make that even more important?
But it is. It's your child.
My son.
(SPEAKING DANISH)
He knew that, regardless of how good I was,
it will never be good enough for anyone else.
What he's always made a point of to me is saying,
'You are more than enough. You are more than good enough.'
And he said it to me when I was 14, before games,
he still says it to me. 'You have nothing to prove.'
You know, as a son, having your dad tell you that- that's enough for me.
When you're in the flow of a career like football,
you get numb to a lot of things.
So, the highs aren't as high, and the lows aren't as low,
because you're so used to that rollercoaster
that you're on every week.
When you first start your career,
playing in front of 60,000 people is a dream, it's incredible.
But 15 years down the line, that's your everyday.
That's part of your job.
But when you then go back and you look at, I think,
what is it my dad played, nearly 700 games.
Like, 700 games, that's incredible.
129 caps. That's special.
And now he's, kind of, restarting, at 60,
his— the next part of his life.
'Cause, as an athlete, you die twice.
Once you finish your career, it's been your whole life,
your whole identity, from when you were a child.
And all of a sudden, you're not this anymore,
and you are never coming back.
What now? Like, who are you now?
So, that's why I say an athlete dies twice,
'cause that's your identity gone. Now you have to— You're reborn.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
My father, he's buried about 200 yards from my house.
We always go past and say hello.
He's got a really nice resting place here,
'cause obviously he became a Danish citizen,
but he was born in Poland,
and Poland is actually directly in line with that tree.
So, he can have a look at Poland.
(BELLS CHIME)
And he can listen to the music of Denmark.
Right, come on. Come on, you.
(GENTLE MUSIC CONTINUES) (BELLS CONTINUE CHIMING)
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