Kasper Schmeichel is set to become Celtic number one – and his predecessor has already sent some advice.
Brendan Rodgers’ hunt for a new goalkeeper to replace Joe Hart following his retirement looks set to have him turning to the former Leicester City keeper. The pair worked together at the Foxes and following time with Anderlecht, the Danish number one is poised for the Hoops.
Writing in his Euro 2024 column for the BBC, Hart dedicated plenty of warm words to the possible next Celtic number one, and it provides plenty of hints over what the Premiership champions are going to get. He wrote: “Kasper and I go way back, all the way to when we faced each other for the first time in February 2006, when I was playing for Shrewsbury and he was on loan at Bury from Manchester City.
“Back then, we were just two teenagers playing our first few professional games in League Two, so it is pretty cool how things evolved for both of us over the course of our careers. At 37, he is the same age as me. Well, in fact, he is five months older, and I love the fact he is still playing on the biggest stage. In England, people may well have lost track of him since he left Leicester in 2022 – I have found out myself that our English mindset when you are not in the Premier League can be that if you are out of sight, you are out of mind.
“His strengths as a goalkeeper are his physique and his power. He turned himself into an incredible athlete at a young age, and that has never changed. He is aggressive and assertive, and he can do things that a lot of other keepers can’t. But as well as his physical attributes, I know how his mentality has played a huge part in what he has done in his career, and how he achieved it.
“You don’t stay at the top for so long, like he has, without having an incredible passion for the game. 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.
“Once you get to a certain age as a goalkeeper, it is not so much the miles in your legs that you can feel as the impact of the dives you have made on your body. You can’t continue for any reason other than it is just what you do, and because you want to keep doing it. I am retired now, but I am so pleased Kasper is still out there, and is not finished yet. He treats every game as an education, and even now he wants to learn some more.”
