With Ireland vs Denmark the fate the football gods have left us with to get to the 2018 World Cup, we had the pleasure of Manchester United and Denmark legend Peter Schmeichel at our Off The Ball Roadshow with Carlsberg at the RDS.
Chatting to Kevin Kilbane and Nathan Murphy on stage, the former goalkeeper shared stories and insights from a career at the very top of the game.
Schmeichel spoke fondly of former team-mate Eric Cantona who he used to room with on away trips and also shared an insight into the way the maverick Frenchman moulded his personality in and out of the media glare.
"Eric's a fantastic fella. He's a really nice guy. You know, Eric's an actor so what you guys know is the actor. He's playing a part and he's doing that really well. Basically he's like everyone else," he said, adding that the good thing at Man United was that Cantona had a manager who understood him in the shape of Alex Ferguson and team-mates who did not regard him as a "freak" figure.
Now we know the real reason for @Pschmeichel1's visit to Ireland.. he's come to collect his debt from @kdkilbane77 #OTBRDS pic.twitter.com/iUyswCpfeV
— Off The Ball (@offtheball) November 9, 2017
Schmeichel had the reputation of being one of a select bunch of goalscoring goalkeepers and although he didn't score in the 1999 Champions League final, he did cause a bit of havoc in the Bayern Munich box late on as he sauntered up.
However, the Dane pointed to a mistake from Bayern manager Ottmar Hitzfeld that played into United's hand as they exploited set piece opportunities to famously turn the game around late on at the Nou Camp.
Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson with Peter Schmeichel. Phil Noble/PA Archive/PA Images
"I seriously feel that Ottmar Hitzfeld made a big mistake with the substitutions. He should never have taken Matthaus off. He was organising and orchestrating the whole thing," Schmeichel recalled.
And wearing the captain's armband that night, it meant he was filling in the role in place of the suspended Roy Keane who he described as "subtle" in the build-up to the final.
"It's actually the most subtle I've ever seen Roy. Obviously it was a big game to miss and it was a massive problem for us [to not have Keane]. People don't realise how big a problem it was to miss him. Not only him but Paul Scholes as well," said Schmeichel.
"He was around the team and he was in a caring mood which we hadn't seen before. No one [had] seen him like that before and also after the game we had to bring him out onto the pitch. He didn't want to come onto the pitch."
He then joked that former United team-mate David May had played every game at Manchester United including the 1968 final.
âš½ï¸ @Pschmeichel1 revealed what his aim was when he went up for set pieces at our @carlsberg roadshow #OTBRDS pic.twitter.com/f0FjXocjJk
— Off The Ball (@offtheball) November 9, 2017
He also talked about a late start to professional football as professionalism came late in Denmark which meant he had to work at a trade early on simultaneously.
And he also quashed a Graeme Souness book story that he had sent a letter to Liverpool in his pre-Man United days offering to join the club.
