Peter Schmeichel cost Manchester United £505,000 in the summer of 1991. Eight years later he left as the most decorated goalkeeper the English game had seen, the captain who led United out for the biggest match in the club's history, and by his own manager's estimation, one of the great bargains British football has ever done.
The bargain of the century
Manchester United signed a 27-year-old Peter Schmeichel from Danish club Brøndby in August 1991 for £505,000. Alex Ferguson later called it one of the bargains of the century in football, and little about the eight seasons that followed argued against it — no signing at Old Trafford would return more silverware relative to what United paid for him. United hadn't won the English top-flight title since 1967 when Schmeichel arrived; the twenty-six-year wait ended in his second season, 1992/93, the first of five league titles he'd collect before he was done.
Peter Schmeichel at Manchester United — the numbers
| Stat | Total |
|---|---|
| Appearances (all competitions) | 398 |
| Clean sheets | 180 – a club record, later matched by David de Gea |
| Goals scored | 1 – v Rotor Volgograd, UEFA Cup, 1995 |
| Premier League titles | 5 – 1992/93, 1993/94, 1995/96, 1996/97, 1998/99 |
| FA Cups | 3 – 1993/94, 1995/96, 1998/99 |
| League Cup | 1 – 1991/92 |
| UEFA Champions League | 1 – 1998/99, as captain |
● Career totals for Manchester United, 1991–1999. Stats correct at time of publication.
World Class Keeper
For his era, Schmeichel was world class because he combined a massive, intimidating physical presence and lightning reflexes with elite cross-claiming and a long-range throw that instantly turned defense into attack.
Schmeichel's defining save wasn't a reflex stop — it was a technique he brought with him from another sport entirely. Before football, he played handball in Denmark, and he carried a handball goalkeeper's instinct for spreading across goal into his football career: the "star jump," throwing his 6ft 3in frame wide to smother a one-on-one before a striker could pick a corner. "The star-jump technique — that is a big part of being a handball goalkeeper, and I brought that move into football," he said. "It is a very effective way of saving a chance." Few goalkeepers in English football had used it with his regularity before; plenty have copied it since, including his own son, Kasper Schmeichel.
His only goal in nearly a decade at the club came from a stoppage-time header against Rotor Volgograd in the 1995 UEFA Cup, scored from a United corner he'd gone up, but it wasn't enough to prevent elimination on away goals.
The treble, 1998/99
Schmeichel's final season at Old Trafford doubled as the greatest campaign an English club had ever put together. United won the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Champions League in the same season in 1998/99 — a treble no English side had completed before — and with Roy Keane suspended for the Champions League final against Bayern Munich, it fell to the goalkeeper to lead the team out. It was a fitting way to close out his United career: the club's most important defensive presence for eight years, handed the captaincy for the single most important match in the club's history.
Individual awards and accolades
| Award | Year(s) |
|---|---|
| UEFA Goalkeeper of the Year | 1992, 1993, 1998 |
| PFA Team of the Year | 1992–93 Premier League |
| Premier League Player of the Season | 1995–96 |
| Most clean sheets in the Premier League | 1994–95, 1995–96, 1997–98 |
● A selection of his individual honours — there are others not listed here.
One last final, then Lisbon
Schmeichel left Manchester United at the end of that treble-winning season, at 36, no longer willing to play the 60-game seasons a club now competing on every front demanded of him. He signed a two-year deal with Sporting CP in Lisbon, later returning to England for spells at Aston Villa and Manchester City before retiring in 2003.
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