Denmark keeper Kasper Schmeichel says he and the rest of the squad were looking “beyond football and to the human being” when they paid for a private jet to fly Blues left-back Jonas Knudsen home to see his newborn daughter following Saturday’s 1-0 victory over Peru.
As reported on Sunday, the squad clubbed together to pay for the flight back to Denmark as a paternity gift to Knudsen, whose wife Trine had given birth to their first baby a number of weeks early last Tuesday. The defender, already in Russia, was surprised to learn that he had become a father from squad staff.
The three-times-capped 25-year-old, an unused sub against the Peruvians, spent Sunday with his wife and new daughter before flying back and rejoining his team-mates at the training base in Anapa on Monday.
"We're footballers but also human beings," Leicester keeper Schmeichel, 31, told a press conference earlier today ahead of the Danes' second Group C match against Australia in Samara on Thursday when Knudsen is again expected to be among the subs (ITV from 12.30pm, KO 1pm).
"I'm a father myself, I can't imagine how big it must have been for Jonas to get the message but not be there. We wanted to help him, there are lots of fathers in the squad.
"You've got to look beyond football and to the human being, so we'd have done everything so he could go and see his newborn baby.”
Elsewhere, former Blues keeper Neil Alexander, 40, has hung up his gloves having left Livingston and has taken the job as goalkeeper-coach at Dundee United.
Scotland international Alexander made 31 appearances for the Blues between July 2007 and January 2008.