The evolution of goalkeeping: Kasper and Peter Schmeichel examine the position

For Father’s Day, our resident father-son goalie duo got together to talk about the evolution of goaltending. Kasper and Peter Schmeichel both won the Premier League and both represented Denmark as starting goalkeeper at their World Cups. They have seen it all and were two of the best goalkeepers in the world in their respective eras. Normally they continue to speak with their caretaker in their native Danish, but we were lucky enough to get them to speak at length in English. During the 2026 World Cup, Peter, 62, and Kasper, 39, sat down and discussed many topics regarding their position on the pitch. Here’s what stood out. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. On the evolution of gloves and balls: Peter: Growing up as a goalkeeper we didn’t have gloves, so gloves came into play around the time I became a senior player, aged 18. I received my first pair of gloves when I was 18. I used gardening gloves in the winter because it was cold, but they didn’t do anything other than keep you relatively warm. It was a good thing because your catching technique improved, and then, of course, the gloves came, and it was a little weird at first, and the quality of the gloves wasn’t great. You had to buy them yourself, relatively expensive, and then we know that the foam started to wear out very, very quickly. Looking at this, you knew you wouldn’t be able to afford a new pair until six months later. So I chose several times, even when I was a senior player, to play without gloves. With the catching and all that, your basic technique was a lot better, but I like throwing the ball. So throwing the ball without gloves made it more accurate and I could throw it longer. And then, of course, gloves came into the game, and their evolution got better, and of course, by the time I started becoming a professional player, you couldn’t play without them anymore. [them]. Kasper: I would investigate the exact altitude we were playing at. I would see what type of terrain it was. I would go to the referees to make sure they were watering the field. I would practice with the ball for a long time. I would make sure which gloves they were, because I took a pair of gloves out of the package and they were ready to go. I use the Vaseline trick. So for those who don’t know, most goalkeepers these days will have Vaseline on their gloves because Vaseline dries them out a little, but it gives incredible grip on some balls. This ball, the World Cup ball, works very well when wet. It works very well when it’s dry. If you use a Premier League ball, it works great when wet, but not so well when dry. So if you’re in a drier state, you do one thing. If you’re in wet conditions, you do something else. On the changes in conditioning and training over the years: Kasper: When you were with the national teams, that was when you had three coaches, and I actually found that I didn’t like all three. I enjoyed it when we had a big group of goalies, because I felt like I could learn from others. I was always watching and seeing what I could learn, but I felt like we could make things more realistic. I’ve watched a lot of things you’ve done. It was a lot of repetition. You always talk to me about repetition, repetition, repetition, catching up. So my pre-practice work was hitting the ball against the wall, just catching it, practicing all the time so it becomes muscle memory. Today, goalkeeper training has changed a lot. You’ve watched me train, I’ve watched you train, and it’s slightly different. So how was it different when you were playing? Peter: When I became a professional footballer, we only had one coach. We didn’t have an assistant coach. There was a coach and no full-time goalkeeping coach, but I had a guy I saw twice a week. Now that philosophy is that everything you do as a goalkeeper, your training has to be done outside of the team. The team should never see you do this. Being a part of everything the outfield players do is important, because it’s a team at the end of the day, and they have to trust you in all areas of football. On game-changing goalkeepers Manuel Neuer and Ederson: Kasper: In my world, there are three people who change goalkeeping forever, you being the first. You brought a certain style. The way you changed the game was domination of the box and quick counter-attacks. Then we had Manuel Neuer in 2014 with the sweeping goalkeeper, then we had Ederson playing with his feet. I would really be interested in your thoughts on Neuer and Ederson. How do you see them? I have my vision of them. What do you think of these two and how they have transformed goaltending? Rock : [The] The first time I saw Neuer live, he was playing for Schalke against Manchester United, and he was playing a blinder. He made an incredible save right at the end of the match, which eliminated Manchester United that day. …I look and think, ‘Whoa, this guy.’ For a few years I tried to persuade [former Manchester United manager] Alex Ferguson to sign him, because I saw him and I wanted someone to continue what I was doing. I thought it was really important that we had someone who could do the same things: control the box, get the team to play higher up the pitch, find those channels. [going forward] when necessary. And he had this young boy here, absolutely fantastic. Ederson takes playing with your feet to the next level. I’ve never seen anything like it. On their approach to penalties: Kasper: For me it was always about control. We actually used a mentalist, a guy who guesses the things you’re thinking, but puts them in your head. So we asked one of them to see what we could actually do to influence a taker, and would it be, for example, putting too much emphasis on certain words. In a VAR situation when the referee is checking, I had the opportunity to speak to the taker. I would overemphasize words like above or right or left, or try to do different things that they kind of taught us to look for. Can I get some sort of influence? We had a penalty against Peru in the 2018 World Cup. I kept putting too much emphasis on the word “Don’t kick it”, all those sorts of things, emphasizing the word. Whether it made a difference, I don’t know. But actually, yes, the ball continues. Peter: I found myself in quite a few penalty shootouts, and I always thought, “I have no control here,” so I needed to gain some control. All the pretending and all the trying to get that, it wasn’t for me. How do I get control? Well, the whistle blows after extra time. Here we go. I know it’s a penalty shootout. I have no idea who these five people will be. I don’t know every time they step on the field, what foot they’re going to kick with. I don’t know where they’re going to hit him. I don’t know what pitch or cadence. So how can I take control in this situation? Well, I’m still making up my mind. “OK, I’m facing five penalties today. I’m going to go two left, one right, one left and one right,” and I’ll leave it at that. It’s my lottery. On where the goalkeeping position will go next: Kasper: Times change all the time now. Football evolves in trends. What will the next goalkeeper look like? For me, we’re seeing players now coming out of academies who maybe aren’t good enough to be on the pitch, and they’re looking at their physical profile and wondering, ‘Can we turn them into goalkeepers?’ Because we had tall, tall goalkeepers who were very dominant in the air. We went to some of the little ones, who were very good with their feet. Now, with the pieces set again, we move on to the slightly larger pieces. So, I’m looking at this, thinking we’re going to see a mix between a Neuer, [Real Madrid and Belgian keeper] Thibaut Courtois and an Ederson. We’re looking for 6-foot-4 guys, 6-foot-6 guys who can do that. Peter: I think the need to be able to better control one’s box will reappear. You always have to look at someone like Pep Guardiola, what he thinks. So when he brought [Italian keeper] Gianluigi Donnarumma to Manchester City, it was because of Arsenal’s dominance at set pieces. So he also brought in Abdukodir Khusanov, who is a big guy. He started playing Nico O’Reilly, who is even taller. He also had Rúben Dias, Erling Harland – big, tall players. When you compare that to the team he had at Barcelona, ​​when no one was taller than 150, 175 centimeters, they were small guys, very fast. He’s like, “Well, now that we’ve got someone thinking about set pieces, we can now take advantage of that and score goals. Well, I’m going to contract that. I’m going to put some big players in there, so you don’t have a chance.” In this you encourage your goalkeepers to go out and kick or catch the ball. And I don’t think that at the moment, in the Premier League, there is anyone better than Donnarumma. It doesn’t seem like you know that he has everything under control, but trust me, he does. He goes out for every ball, and he hits it, big, hard. …Now when everyone [is] By focusing so much on set pieces, I think it becomes more important that a goalkeeper can actually go out and kick the ball or catch it. And I think because of the other thing you said, are we going to see more long balls? I think we’re going to see a lot more direct play, like we’ve already seen at this World Cup, which I’m really, really looking forward to.