Peter Schmeichel on overcoming the stigma of wearing hearing aids

Manchester United goalkeeping legend Peter Schmeichel has just been fitted with his first hearing aids. And he wants everyone to hear about it.

The 60-year-old Dane had a hearing test two years ago after seeing an ENT specialist about a separate problem, and reveals: “He did a hearing test and told me I was on my way towards hearing aids. That was a little bit of a shock for me.

“When you lose your hearing, whatever you’ve lost, you will never gain that again – there’s absolutely nothing that can be done to get more hearing. It’s just going to be gradually worse and worse, and a hearing aid will protect it.

“If you don’t do something about it, who’s to say how much you can hear in 10 years?”

But despite the warning, Schmeichel – who’d always been unable to hear high frequency sounds, but says it didn’t really bother him – still did nothing about his deteriorating hearing.

A post shared by Peter Schmeichel (@pschmeichel1)

“I believe I was born with some kind of hearing loss, which got progressively worse over time to the point where I would really struggle in social situations where there was a lot of background noise,” he says.

“But it’s taken me two years to actually have it done [get hearing aids] because, like everybody else, I’ve been connecting hearing aids with ageing, and maybe a handicap as well and stuff like that. But that’s really, really stupid – it’s ridiculous.”

The former goalie, who won five Premier League titles with Manchester United, and captained the team when it won the Champions League final in 1999 and secured the English treble, finally decided it was time to take action about his hearing when he struggled to hear fellow footballer Freddie Ljungberg when the pair were on stage together at an