Kasper Schmeichel Emerges as Post-Alisson Possibility

There are certain things that accompany each and every World Cup: Budweiser ads, annoying and ill-informed American sports journalists chiming in on the matches, controversial calls, gratuitous shots of attractive female fans, and breakout players who have inordinately boosted their standing on the transfer market. Budweiser is terrible, we all know that, and fans are only as attractive as you perceive them to be, so we’re going to focus on that last point; the World Cup boost.

The World Cup boost is a perfectly understandable phenomenon; if a player excels on the game’s biggest stage when the entire football world is watching, surely that means he can do the same thing week in and week out on the club level, right?

The list of players who lifted their stock during the course of a six-week summer tournament, beit the World Cup or the European Championships, secured a big money move and then flopped is almost too long to recount. The poster child for this strange circumstance is Andrey Arshavin who, while he started off well enough with Arsenal, never really lived up to his Post-Euro 2008 hype when he became a record signing for Arsene Wenger and the Gunners.

All of which brings us to this;

Even if you somehow missed yesterday’s match, beit through Twitter, Instagram, Friendster or even your local news, you no doubt caught a glimpse of Schmeichel’s heroics yesterday against Croatia. While he wasn’t ultimately able to usher Denmark to the Quarterfinals, his three penalty saves (if we include the standard PK he saved in the 116th minute) were the stuff of miracles.

And hey, wouldn’t you know it, his name popped up in the rumor mill the very next day, what a coincidence!

As we’ve discussed several times over the past few weeks, Roma and Chelsea are part of troika of clubs, Real Madrid being the other, involved in a game of musical chairs, wherein all three of their keepers—Alisson, Thibaut Courtois and Keylor Navas—could potentially just trade places before the start of next season, making for an awkward set of reveals.

Of course, with Roma loathe to match the high salaries offered by Chelsea and Real, alternate (read: cheaper) options have emerged, namely Kasper Schmeichel, son of the legendary Manchester United keeper Peter Schmeichel. And while he’s not quite as good as his esteemed father, the younger Schmeichel has over 300 Premier League appearances, as well as a Premiership title, under his belt.

He may not be as glamorous or as explosive as Alisson, but as he showed yesterday, he won’t wilt under the bright lights, but which is he: a legitimate option or simply another example of summer hype?