Kasper ready to write his own chapter

AS HE prepares to have his picture taken on a snow-covered pitch at Falkirk's Stirling University training base, Kasper Schmeichel is posed a few ice-breakers by the man pointing a lens at him.

The on-loan Manchester City keeper is asked the identity of the figure on his sweat shirt. He explains it is Gerd Müller, displaying an encyclopedic knowledge in gushing about the German's World Cup scoring exploits of 1974. He then lifts up his sweatshirt to reveal a T-shirt adorned with Muhammad Ali, before enthusing about the Rumble In The Jungle fight that also took place a full 22 years before his birth. The next enquiry directed towards the 20-year-old concerns the need to be hulking to play in his position. It leads the Dane to rattle off the names and heights of every goalkeeping luminary from the past two decades as proof his 6ft 1in frame is up to the task. It is, indeed, the tale of the tape for a certain Peter Schmeichel, no less. A father and son combination who also share bright blond locks and an ability for measured articulation.

For all that he naturally does not want to be seen merely as an extension of his golden goalie old fella, Falkirk's latest imaginative acquisition does not attempt to detach himself from his upbringing.

An impressive perspective that belies his youth could not allow it to be any other way. Kasper Schmiechel is the man that his father's life has made him.

"I never thought about anything else than being a footballer because I had always been with my dad in and around the footballing environment," he admits. The game has always been a central to my life. I was always aware of the lifestyle, the self discipline you need, the need to eat and drink at the right times and go to bed at the right times."

It is even just the simple things. Schmeichel did not enjoy some sort of epiphany when coming under the influence of nutritionists at football clubs because "my dad was a good cook and like to make meals, so I have always been eating what I should have been from an early age".

Inevitably, young Schmeichel also had the good fortune to meet the right people as he followed his father through a glittering period at Manchester United, then to Portugal with Sporting Lisbon and finally Aston Villa and Manchester City. Yet, although he has yet to make a senior appearance for Stuart Pearce's side, successful loan spells across the past year with Darlington and Bury - supporters there crediting his form as saving them from relegation last season - and under-19 and under-20 caps for Denmark demonstrate that the young Schmeichel is developing under his own steam. Even if he was propelled on the way by family associations that have mentally fast-tracked him.

"Not a lot of things surprise me in football," he says. "I understand the game better because of the privileges I have enjoyed. I have met and talked to some of the world's best players. I worked with my dad, David Seaman and [City coach] Tim Flowers. I still speak to David Seaman regularly, speak to Tim Flowers every day and my dad every day. So if I have any issues they can be resolved quickly because I have three big players who have been there, done that and got the T-shirt."

Schmeichel became accustomed to seeing some of the best players to have graced English football strutting their stuff kitted up in training sessions at United after his dad moved to Old Trafford from Brondby when he was only five.

"My dad has helped me a lot," he says. "I have been able to see first-class football at his first hand. I have been able to see all these big players, how they trained, how they worked. I watched Eric Cantona, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes in training. They were my heroes as a kid and still are. I was always able to join in at training on occasion wherever my dad has been and that taught me everything about the inner workings of football clubs."

His football schooling wasn't restricted to what his role model could provide, however. A season with Estoril in Lisbon as a 12-year-old brought him his first experience of playing the game seriously. Following on from that, he was given the opportunity to attend a sports college back home in Denmark. "I specialised in football and played for a semi- professional club called Oure. It was a one-year course and an extension of ordinary schooling. Normally, you go there at 16 or 17 but I was a couple of years younger."

Then came a break that few young players could ever hope to come their way. Schmeichel was only five when a Denmark side in which his father was a pivotal performer produced one of the greatest shocks in the history of the game to win the 1992 European Championships. He doesn't remember the triumph - "I'm told I watched it but I can only remember the parties we had when mum and dad came back from Sweden," he says - but it was to impact on him ten years later.

Following the completion of his studies, Schmeichel was back home in Denmark that summer and so able to take in an exhibition game then an annual event to celebrate the country's 1992 success. Bringing together all the players from the winning squad, commitments elsewhere prevented reserve keeper Mogens Krogh from attending that year.

"A tradition within this show game was that my dad would play up front for the second half," he says. "As the sub keeper was away in Germany with his club, I was asked to go in goal and played behind Lars Olsen, who had just gone to Brondby as a youth coach. He took me there and after three months I played in a big youth tournament that won me a trial with Manchester City. They offered me a schoolboy scholarship and I have been there ever since."

Schmeichel is now ensconced in the Bridge of Allan apartment vacated by Anthony Stokes, following the Irish striker's £2m move to Sunderland from Arsenal a fortnight ago. There is no questioned that the teenager's 16 goals on loan at Falkirk greased the wheels for the deal. The keeper, though, hasn't turned to Scotland in the hope that John Hughes works the charm for one more youngster plucked from Premiership reserve level. "Not at all," Schmeichel says. "I'm signed to City for another year-and-a-half. I'm not looking for a big money move."

In being fourth in the City pecking order behind Nicky Weaver, Andreas Isaksson and Joe Hart, the Dane may eventually require to leave to further his career. For now, he is simply concentrating on personal development, the purpose of his Falkirk switch ten days ago.

"I didn't have much to think about when Stuart Pearce told me the club had rang about me," he says. "At my age and the stage I am at in my career, you don't turn down the chance to play for Falkirk in the SPL. It is a big step and the highest level I have ever played at. It might end up being the highest level I ever play at."

Schmeichel insists he in no way feels burdened by his father's past glories, even if these make him an easy target for opposition supporters. "If people want to judge me by him, then that's up to them," he says. "He has had his career, I'm trying to build mine. No-one says I'll ever reach the heights he did. My aim is not win this, or win that, but become as good as I can be. If that leads me to play at a high level, then so be it.

"And if I get some stick along the way, I'm not bothered. I don't hear anything when I am on the field. Not our fans or their fans because I block everything out. The only thing is if I meet away fans on the street. I never listen to any of that because if you did, it would do your head in."

A proud Dane who counts Copenhagen as his home and Manchester as "his home from home", the Falkirk keeper believes that idea that he will have some genetic disposition to play the game just like his father fails to take account of his socialisation. His debut against Dunfermline last weekend produced one save declared redolent of his parent in his pomp but the youngster maintains bloodline was not the reason.

"It is very European to come out and spread yourself," he says. "It comes from playing other sports. In my case that was handball, where you stand up and make yourself as big as possible. I'm not like my dad in that I can't throw the ball anywhere near as far as he could, while I probably use my feet more. We are the same height but he is so much bigger and wider across the shoulders. He was a very commanding keeper. Everything in the box was his, whereas with my build I have to pick my moments and can't come out and do the same things he did. We are definitely two very different goalkeepers."

In body, perhaps, but not in mind.