'Powerful, hard-working, winner - my friend Kasper'

'Powerful, hard-working, winner - my friend Kasper'

I have not heard Kasper Schmeichel speak before Denmark’s Euro 2024 game against England on Thursday, but I know exactly what he will be feeling.

He is going to feel like he is the best goalkeeper he can be - that he is still at the peak of his powers and that he can still make a difference for his country - he would not be here otherwise.

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.

Schmeichel, who now plays his club football in Belgium with Anderlecht, has won 102 caps for Denmark since his senior international debut in 2013

At 37, he is the same age as me. Well, in fact, he is five months older. He is the oldest keeper to have played at these Euros so far, 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.

But there will be many more watching the game on Thursday who, like me, will appreciate Kasper for everything he is, as a person and a player.

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.

From League Two to title winner

Schmeichel celebrates Leicester's Premier League title win in 2016

We met as opponents, but Kasper and I soon became team-mates at City when I joined them a few months after that game at Gay Meadow, and we clicked straightaway. Right from the start, we were never rivals, always good friends.

Kasper was the first person to welcome me at City on my first day at the training ground. He was actually waiting for me, to take me into the building. I'll never forget that, because it meant a lot.

For me at the time, it was especially huge because of his name. I'd love to just talk about Kasper here but you cannot ignore the fact that his dad was Peter Schmeichel, a goalkeeping legend who I really looked up to.

That got Kasper through a few doors, and got him into conversations, but the rest? He had to do it all himself.

In fact, you could say he had it tougher because he knew people were judging him before he stepped into goal because of who he was.

His response was to work harder than everyone, forge his own path and write his own place in the Premier League history books, and win more than 100 caps for Denmark.

That attitude has always been part of his make-up and has helped to make him an incredible goalkeeper - hard-working and strong, but also opinionated and willing to stand by his word.

All of this was part of his journey down to League Two and back to become a title winner with Leicester, via the loan moves he made at every level, or when he was willing to take risks and drop down divisions in order to play first-team football.

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.

Every game is an education

Schmeichel and Hart met in the 2015-16 season, when Leicester side won the Premier League title

Another thing Kasper and I had in common from those early days together at City was our work ethic.

Whatever happened to me in football, good or bad, I never let my work-rate dip, or allowed my attitude to be questioned and Kasper never gave anyone a chance to do that either.

That’s probably one of the reasons we both got to the age of 37 at the top level, but I never thought I was doing anything special and I am sure if you asked Kasper he would say the same.

It never felt like an effort for me to push myself, because football was never a sacrifice to me. Instead it was my life, and it meant everything.

Trying to be at my best was something that I enjoyed doing, right from when Kasper and I were kids together at City, until the very end of my last season with Celtic, a few weeks ago.

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.

Joe Hart was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan in Berlin.