IT IS midday at the Cliff, Manchester United's training ground, some 48 hours before kick-off. In the hall in front of the dressing rooms, the club's goalkeeper holds court to a group of young professionals, gathered as if they were schoolkids jostling to see Santa on the last shopping day before Christmas.
Peter Schmeichel is enjoying the craic. But does he want their audience for this interview? He makes a shooing-away gesture with his long left arm and the apprentices disappear, the noise disperses and the big voice at the centre of it quietens. There's a striking contrast, and one often observed, between the Schmeichel you see roaring on television - the one you can sometimes hear loud and clear from deep in the grandstand on a Saturday - and the person who actually speaks rather softly, measuring his words.
To some extent it is a studied contrast, a device through which Schmeichel paces himself throughout a long season. United meet Liverpool in the FA Cup today, in the tie of the fourth round, and a contest which was spectacularly marketed by last weekend's scorelines (seven home goals at Anfield, six for United against Leicester City). The excited teenagers grouped around Schmeichel sense a D-Day ahead, goals galore; outside, opposing camera crews argue feverishly for their position in the line. The goalkeeper's posture is otherwise: "If anybody came and saw us in training or came into the dressing room," says Schmeichel, "they wouldn't think we had an FA Cup game coming up against Liverpool. That's how relaxed we are."
Nor is it a matter of how high the FA Cup ranks in United minds - third on the list of priorities. This is a game against Liverpool, remember. "We're relaxed in the Premiership as well," continued Schmeichel, "and we've become very relaxed about the Champions League because we've played so many games in it. That's one of our strengths. If you spend a lot of energy being nervous, it takes something off your game. But if you can switch it on when it matters and switch it off when it doesn't, you're in a very good position. If you spend the time in between the games building up and winding down, using energy where I don't think you should be using it, you're losing a lot."
The question of how to preserve energy, of carrying body - all 16st and 6ft 4in of it - and mind through 60 big games a season has preoccupied Schmeichel for the past 18 months. United have played much of their football at a very high tempo of late and he has been feeling his age. Thirty-five never used to be considered especially venerable for a man in his position, but then life is not what it used be at the top, and certainly not what it once was for goalkeepers. When Schmeichel reflects on the dramatic turns of fortune during his time at Old Trafford, as he tends to, he might also note that his career has coincided with significant changes in the role, and indeed the remit, of the goalie.
All of which has brought him to a crossroads. Schmeichel will make at least two dozen split-second decisions this afternoon and none will be as important as the one that took him "oh, a year and a half," and which, when he revealed it to the wider world, had him fighting back tears. He is, he confesses, still coming to terms with "the ramifications of not playing for United, the best place in the world, in the best league in the world, the best stadiums, the best crowds and the best atmosphere".
Schmeichel will leave Old Trafford in the summer, for one more adventure. "I've reached an age when I need to train more," he explained. Getting your farewell in early, as he did by announcing his intention in November, can breed conspiracy theories (ask Paddy Ashdown), but his reasoning is consistent, his answer to those who would put it down to money dismissive: "I've been accused of wanting to go abroad to cash in. That's got nothing to do with it. I could have cashed in staying here."
Rather, his body needs more time to train, and fewer competitive games per season. "I'm a proud player and I'm by no means finished," adds Schmeichel. "I'm very, very ambitious and still very hungry. I have a great desire for the game. When I play I still feel myself coming to life, but you can't run away from age. In doing what I'm doing I can just sharpen up a bit and then I'll end up playing another four years. It was a hard decision but I think it's made me a more mature human being."
Mature and, inevitably, a little elegaic. Before Manchester's favourite Dane prepared the public for his parting, at an emotional press conference, he and Alex Ferguson, the United manager, shared a private half-hour of reminiscence. "It was a good talk and I enjoyed it," he recalls. "I've been here in the time when the trophies have come back to Old Trafford and I've had a very good relationship with the manager.
"You're bound to sit back and let a few memories come across. It was a nice way to appreciate what you've done as a total." The total, in the eight years since he joined from Brondby for less than £600,000, comes to four Premiership titles, two FA Cups, a League Cup, and a great deal in between. And he's still counting. Schmeichel believes that "in the past four to six weeks, we've really come together. Why can't we go for every tournament? We can. The FA Cup is still very special, and you only have to have played in a final to know that. I've been fortunate enough to have played in three finals, and I want another." Should today be his last FA Cup game, United still sit third in the Premiership, and first in the goalscoring tables, domestic and European.
At the other end of the pitch, however, the figures are not so efficient. Schmeichel acknowledges he has made errors in his last season: "I'm always critical of my game. I've always been like that; every player has to be his own worst critic. Obviously you make mistakes - you have to work on them, and I've always done that."
He has also been playing behind a defence which, by the standards set during his own United career, has been relatively unsettled. Hindsight sets demanding standards, too. When Schmeichel talks of playing behind Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister he almost makes it sound as if they were one person: "Bruce-Pallister was, and is, unbeatable in terms of consistency over appearances and consistency in the role they're playing in," he believes, "whereas with new players coming in, you have to sharpen up. You have to be a part of them settling into the team.
"Jaap Stam, for instance, has come in from Holland, and the way they play in Holland is different to here, the pace of the game is different. So there are always . . . talking points." Or shouting ones.
Injuries have also slowed the gelling of this season's back four, says Schmeichel: "It's only natural, because there are new players coming in and some players playing out of position. Jaap's been out of the side, Ronny Johnsen's been out, and Gary Neville's come in and done ever so well. What we want is for the same two names to play every week.
"There have been times when we haven't been happy with what's been going on because the defence is the bank box, the safety valve of the team, which has allowed the rest of the side to take chances and greater risks."
Come August, that bank box may suddenly seem terribly overdrawn. Stam, Neville and company will be bedding in a new colleague charged with succeeding the best goalkeeper in the world, an asset United comfortably called theirs for much of the 1990s. Wise dynasties stagger the loss of their noblemen and the English game would wish him a departure from Old Trafford as dignified as those of Bruce, Hughes, Cantona, Pallister, McClair, and not, say, of a Jim Leighton.
"Nothing ever lasts forever in football," reflects Schmeichel. "Even Brian Kidd left the club, which is something nobody ever thought would happen. Players are moving around, managers are moving around.
"I just felt that now was the time to get the new motivation, a new place, with all the cultural things to take into account. Professional football is an adventure: you leave your home, your country, you go to somewhere new, you have to settle in, adjust to a new kind of life, learn a new language.
"There are very few jobs in life where you get that chance and, having tried it once, I would like to try it just one more time, to have the chance to go abroad and have all those challenges."
Above all, he is seeking an extension to his professional excellence. "Something new sharpens you in every sense," he says, "whereas if you've been eight years in a place, or 10 or 12 or 15, a lot of things become a question of playing it by ear or by experience or by routine."
With that, duty called Schmeichel away from the Cliff to a meeting with one of the United directors. And no, he wasn't going to be discussing a late change of heart.
