Kasper Schmeichel was forced out of Leeds because they did not want to lose him for free… now he faces his former side as Leicester captain having become a ‘noisy’ leader and …

It fell to Simon Grayson, almost 10 years ago, to explain why Leeds United had accepted a bid of less than £1m from Leicester City for Kasper Schmeichel.

It was June 2011, and Leeds had just missed out on the Championship play-offs, conceding 70 goals. Schmeichel had a year left of his two-year contract. He wanted to stay. Yet Leeds had decided he was to leave.

‘I am trying to improve the back four,’ said Grayson, the Leeds boss at the time. ‘When Kasper goes, we have alternatives that will make us better.’

Leeds accepted a bid of less than £1m from Leicester for Kasper Schmeichel in June 2011

The Dane will now captain the Foxes against his former club as a totally different goalkeeper

In short: he’s not good enough. Behind the scenes, though, the view was that Leeds and chairman Ken Bates would rather cash in then than risk losing him for nothing.

A decade on and Schmeichel will captain Leicester against his former club. He will do so as a Premier League winner, a Champions League quarter-finalist and a three-time Danish Footballer of the Year. 

He’s won 60 caps for his country and played at a World Cup. He’s just made his 400th appearance for Leicester and is leading them in yet another title race as one of the best goalkeepers in the Premier League.

Forced out at Leeds, a legend at Leicester. Quite the journey.

As far as Schmeichel was concerned, his time there was doomed from the start. ‘I remember about three weeks after joining Leeds thinking, “What have I done?”, ‘ Schmeichel told Joe Hart’s Gloved YouTube channel.

Schmeichel will captain Leicester a decade on as a winner of the 2015/16 Premier League

He’s just made his 400th appearance for Leicester and is leading them in yet another title race

‘It was very clear, very early on that it was the wrong club for me. It was a club where I was not accepted and with my father’s history, it was evident among the fans that they did not approve of that. I just didn’t feel welcome at all at the club. It was a really bad time.’

Schmeichel didn’t even know Leeds had accepted an offer. He was in Denmark when a friend phoned to congratulate him on the move. Only two weeks earlier, he had told Leicester boss Sven-Goran Eriksson, who had managed him at Man City and Notts County, that he was going to stay and fight it out at Leeds. When he spoke to Bates, Schmeichel was told he either left or was with the academy lads.

Eventually, it all got sorted. Schmeichel joined Leicester and has never looked back.

Nigel Pearson still remembers the first time he encountered Schmeichel. Well, heard him. The former Leicester manager was working for the FA, around 2003, and was at Manchester United’s training ground watching a youth game.

Pearson was observing a game on the next pitch when he heard the voice coming from the match over his shoulder. ‘I knew it was Peter’s son,’ he tells The Mail on Sunday. ‘He was very, very vocal. What I noticed that day was that he had a presence, even though he was a young man.’

Nigel Pearson remembers that Schmeichel was ‘very, very vocal’ the first time he saw him

Not much has changed on that front. Schmeichel is 34 now, not quite as young. But he’s Leicester’s on-field captain. An influential member of the dressing room. A leader.

‘What I always found with him was that he can be outspoken, for sure, but he is a winner,’ said Pearson, who managed Schmeichel at Leicester from 2011-2015, winning promotion from the Championship and surviving relegation the year before their incredible triumph. ‘He wins points. He would win as many points as some of the strikers would. Because he’s a match-winner.

‘Even if he had made a mistake, when he went into the next game, he would not hide. He would not try to be safe. He would try to be positive. That is a fabulous attribute and an illustration of his mental strength and self-belief.’

Schmeichel has now become one of the most influential voices in the Leicester dressing room

That constant source of noise hasn’t changed either. Football in front of no fans may have killed off the in-play atmosphere but it also means you can hear what the players have to say. It wouldn’t be a Leicester game without the microphones picking something up, whether it be Schmeichel balling at his players, hounding the referee or kicking his studs against the post before a goal-kick.

When referee Mike Dean showed full-back James Justin a yellow card in the draw against Everton, Schmeichel bellowed up-field: ‘You’re better than this, Mike!’

‘He’s just noisy, isn’t he,’ says Danny Simpson, one of Schmeichel’s title-winning team-mates. ‘Sometimes I would just turn around and think “Just give it a minute, will you!” But that’s him. He’s like that every day in training. He is a leader in the dressing room and he is someone people turn to.’

He can be outspoken but the constant source of noise has not quietened over the years

Simpson knows Schmeichel better than most. Growing up in Manchester, Simpson at United, Schmeichel at City. When they joined Leicester, they spent a lot of time driving up and down the M6, staying in hotels.

‘I got to know him on a different level, especially in the Marriott before home games on a Friday night! We’d stay there, have food together and I got to know him on a deeper level. At a football level he’s just this driven angry man who wants to win everything, who likes to moan over every single decision. 

‘Then you sit with him and have food and you talk about life, his kids and his family. I don’t think he often openly talks about that. He is someone who gives good advice, on football and non football matters. But mainly football because he’s football mad. It’s non-stop with him.’

Yet there is one part of Pearson’s first impression of Schmeichel that has changed. One that has been left behind by the force of a successful career: ‘I knew it was Peter’s son.’

The first rule of interviewing Schmeichel is a simple one: don’t ask him about his dad. There’s been countless times an unwitting reporter has cheerily thrown Schmeichel a question about the two of them.

Danny Simpson knows Schmeichel better than most, having grown up together in Manchester

‘You’re about to embark on your first Champions League campaign, your dad had quite a few of them, didn’t he?’

‘Did he?’

‘You’ve just saved a penalty at Old Trafford. That means you’ve saved more here than your dad.’

‘Does it?’

Awkward silence. Next hurried question.

That’s the difficulty. On the one hand, it’s an inescapable comparison. The son of a great Premier League goalkeeper now himself an excellent Premier League goalkeeper. And, on the other, it’s an inescapable comparison. A caveat Schmeichel has shouldered his entire career. The present always held up against the past. You cannot blame him for finding it all a little tiresome.

One of Schmeichel’s greatest achievements is to have forced people to cut the prefix. While still under-rated, spoken about too little in talk of the league’s best keepers, Schmeichel is now recognised in his own right.

‘He has been able to cement his own identity in the world of football,’ says Pearson. ‘People don’t talk of him as Peter Schmeichel’s son now, they talk about Kasper Schmeichel,’ says Pearson. ‘For him to be in the public domain and have to deal with that over a sustained period of time and prove his worth and his qualities is very admirable.

The first rule of interviewing Schmeichel is a simple one: don’t ask him about his dad Peter

‘It is incredible that father and son are both top, top goalkeepers. Different styles in some ways, very similar in others. What they both have is a really strong personality and a winning mentality.

‘When people talk of the two of them together now, there is more of an equality feel to them. Different eras, different timescales and different pathways but still top performers.

‘He has had to really win people over. He has had to change people’s outlook on him. He has done that. And he has had a great career.’

For Grayson, he has since admitted that those claims about Schmeichel’s ability were actually not true. That wasn’t the reason at all. It was because, with a year left on his contract, Bates did not want to lose him for nothing.

‘It was a business deal that I wasn’t overjoyed in doing,’ Grayson told The Athletic. ‘The people above me made the decision to sell him because they didn’t want him to walk out on a free. It wasn’t anything to do with his ability. Yes, I had to make out at the time that, sort of, we were looking for more competition.’

For Schmeichel, his game continues to improve. A superb shot-stopper who now commands his area. His torpedo long passes out of his hands often start Leicester’s counter-attacks.

Simon Grayson has admitted those claims about Schmeichel’s ability were actually not true

‘He is technically very gifted,’ says Pearson. ‘He is one of the best and accurate passers in the team. The modern game is not just about judging goalkeepers on their ability to shot stop. It is about presence, about aura, more than anything about decision-making. Especially at the top end, ability with the ball is fundamental.’

Schmeichel will be key to deciding whether Leicester can do it again. Even if they fall short in the title race, the Champions League is well within their grasp.

‘I remember when we got knocked out of the Champions League,’ says Simpson. ‘He was like: ‘I have to do that again. I have to play in that again.’ He has got that drive and ambition. He is 34 and looks after himself. He’s played 400 games and there’s no reason why he can’t go on and get 500, 600 games at Leicester. He is already a legend there.’

Whatever else Schmeichel goes on to achieve, he’s made a name for himself, no matter how familiar it sounds.

Schmeichel’s torpedo long passes out of his hands often start Leicester’s counter-attacks