Peter Schmeichel has revealed the advice he gave to son Kasper in the wake of Celtic’s crushing Champions League defeat.
Dortmund put Brendan Rodgers’ side to the sword in a ruthless exposure of their opponent’s elite level deficiencies, sending the Hoops in 5-1 down at half time before adding another couple in the second half to compound the misery. Schmeichel Jnr is to thank for keeping it down to seven with a couple of smart second half stops.
But that will be of little consolation to a keeper with his mindset, who won’t easily shrug off shipping seven no matter the circumstances. Working at the game for CBS, dad Peter conquered Europe with Manchester United as a player and will have been on the positive end of some thrashing in this competition. But rather than a hard luck story, the Great Dane told his boy what is now required as he headed for the dressing in the bowels of Signal Iduna Park.
“It really is difficult because you always want the best for your children,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what situation they find themselves in, and of course today was just one of those days that you can never, ever explain.
“There were so many shot at goal. Seven of them went in and it could have been a little bit more. As Callum McGregor said to me earlier, it was just one of those days and they couldn’t get close enough to close that down.
“I spoke to Kasper as he came out of the game here and their dressing room is just there. I spoke to him and said this was a bad, bad day at the office and take it as nothing more. Move on, be one of the leaders in the dressing room and help everybody else recover from this.
“Because up until this point, don’t forget, Celtic have played really, really good football and there is so much optimism at the club. Obviously they need to go through what happened and all that, but this was just a really, really bad day in the office.”