Manchester United legend Peter Schmeichel says he has ‘never been so nervous’ in his life than the final moments of the 1999 Champions League final.
The incredible match remains forever etched into the memory of football fans far and wide.
Mario Basler opened the scoring for Bayern after just six minutes and that looked like it would turn out to be the winner heading into stoppage time.
But United dramatically equalised through Teddy Sheringham before Ole Gunnar Solskjaer turned the ball home from a corner two minutes later to secure a historic treble for Sir Alex Ferguson’s side.
Having already lifted the Premier League and FA Cup, the breathtaking 2-1 comeback win against the Bundesliga giants remains unmatched by any English club more than two decades on.
And in an exclusive interview with talkSPORT, Schmeichel said the sheer prospect of failure is what drove him on in the crazy final few moments of the Camp Nou showdown.
“It was a crazy moment, it’s still clear in my memory. I’m running back [after we’ve got the equaliser] and I’ve got to refocus,” he explained.
“I’m thinking to myself ‘it’s going to extra-time and I’m not going to cost my team under any circumstances’.
“Three years earlier at the European Championship final the Czech goalkeeper [Petr Kouba] had made a big mistake and the game was over [against Germany] by golden goal.
“I couldn’t let that happen to me. There was 20 seconds left and I’ve never been so nervous in my life.
“I was just praying in my head ‘don’t shoot anyone, as I’m not capable of saving anything right now’.
“So I regain my focus and… bam (claps) we’ve scored another goal and I just cannot believe it.
“Then it was all over and my memory goes completely blank.
“The ending to that game is just crazy and I don’t think it will ever happen again.”
Describing the winning mentality of that United team, Schmeichel added: “You have to gamble and throw caution to the wind in order to win and achieve big things.
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“You’ve got to invest more than anybody else and more than what is expected.
“If you look at the way we got to that treble that year, quite often we were cutting it fine and had that type of situation arose.
“For instance we were 1-0 down against Liverpool in the FA Cup fourth round and we turned that around into a 2-1 win with two late goals.
“That was just the kind of team we were, driven by a relentless manager who would never ever give in and that rubbed off on us as players.
