Kasey Keller On Three-Year Foxes Spell

In conversation with John Hutchinson, Kasey Keller recently looked back at his career, which took him from growing up in the United States to playing for Leicester City, prior to starring in La Liga, the Bundesliga and the MSL.

2026-04-29T13:00+01:00

by John Hutchinson

Published

29 Apr, 2026

Kasey Keller On Three-Year Foxes Spell

In conversation with John Hutchinson, Kasey Keller recently looked back at his career, which took him from growing up in the United States to playing for Leicester City, prior to starring in La Liga, the Bundesliga and the MSL.

John Hutchinson

2026-04-29T13:00+01:00

Kasey Keller On Three-Year Foxes Spell

In conversation with John Hutchinson, Kasey Keller recently looked back at his career, which took him from growing up in the United States to playing for Leicester City, prior to starring in La Liga, the Bundesliga and the MSL.

John Hutchinson

2026-04-29T13:00+01:00

Kasey Keller On Three-Year Foxes Spell

In conversation with John Hutchinson, Kasey Keller recently looked back at his career, which took him from growing up in the United States to playing for Leicester City, prior to starring in La Liga, the Bundesliga and the MSL.

John Hutchinson

2026-04-29T13:00+01:00

Kasey Keller On Three-Year Foxes Spell

In conversation with John Hutchinson, Kasey Keller recently looked back at his career, which took him from growing up in the United States to playing for Leicester City, prior to starring in La Liga, the Bundesliga and the MSL.

John Hutchinson

2026-04-29T13:00+01:00

He also won 102 caps for the USA before being inducted into the country’s Hall of Fame in 2015.

“I grew up in northwest USA,” Kasey began. “As well as playing soccer, I played baseball, basketball and American football until I was about 15 or 16. I started focusing on being a goalkeeper when I was about 14 and, when I started to make the youth national teams for soccer, it became really difficult for me to play other sports. I went on to play college soccer at the University of Portland, where I played for the ex-West Ham left-back Clive Charles.

“I was able to play for Portland Timbers, but when they became fully professional, I couldn’t play for them because I would have lost my university eligibility.

“I was in the US Under-20s team which finished fourth in the 1989 FIFA U20 World Cup in Saudi Arabia. I won the Silver Ball for being the tournament’s second-best player. The following year, I was part of the squad for the 1990 World Cup Finals.”

In February 1992, Kasey signed for Millwall. This was a culture shock for Kasey, but it was a very positive experience, as he recalled: “When I signed, I hadn’t realised that there had never been an American on an American passport who had played in England. I got to understand the difference between playing in a tournament and playing every week in a professional environment. At Millwall, I couldn’t have had a better personal experience or a better platform for my career. I played 202 games for them in four seasons. I’d just turned 22 when I got the trial. So much about goalkeeping is experience. To be able to play in so many games and experience so many different scenarios at a young age meant that I couldn’t have asked for a better start.”

in August 1996, Kasey joined Martin O’Neill’s Leicester, newly promoted to the Premier League.

“Millwall had just been relegated to the third tier,” he explained. “I was supposed to go to either Everton or Nottingham Forest, but things didn’t quite work out the way they were supposed to – or maybe they did! Then, in the end, I just remember getting a phone call from the chief executive telling me that Millwall had agreed terms with Leicester City and that I was to go to the Midlands for negotiation.

“I went and had some really great conversations with Martin O’Neill. I really understood his confidence and his plan. He also had confidence in me. He convinced me that Leicester wouldn’t be relegated by Christmas. He said that the team was much better than that and it would surprise a lot of people. Having played at Filbert Street, I knew it was a club with great support, and I was excited for the opportunity to see if I could perform in the Premier League as well as I had in the Championship.

“I think the fee was around £700,000 initially and then another £200,000 after so many appearances,” Kasey said. “There’s a responsibility which comes with that. There were a lot of question marks when Leicester got promoted. It worked out perfectly well, but to start with there were not a lot of players coming in. I know Martin had brought Muzzy [Izzet] and Neil [Lennon] towards the end of the previous season. Spencer Prior and myself got signed a little bit later. Then Ian Marshall came in and Matty Elliott and Steve Guppy after that. There was a kind of a slow progression of players coming in, but Martin had a plan and it obviously worked out extremely well. We were the pundits’ pick to be relegated by Christmas in that first season back in the Premier League but we finished in ninth place and won the League Cup.

“At the start of the season, we never expected to win the League Cup. It was a huge bonus. The honour of playing at Wembley didn’t escape me. I have good memories of the replay at Hillsborough, as you do any time you win and keep a clean sheet. Defensively, we played very well and then [Steve] Claridge got the winning goal to win the cup. Unfortunately for myself, it was a little bit of a muted celebration because I had to go to a hotel that night at Heathrow for a very early morning flight out to play for the national team in a World Cup qualifier. Also, I didn’t want to celebrate a League Cup win until I knew that we had secured our Premier League status in our first season back. It’s great fun to win a cup but not at the expense of being relegated. So it wasn’t really until a few weeks later that I celebrated, when we mathematically knew we were safe. We made up for it later though and made sure that we were super excited about what we’d been able to achieve.”

Winning the League Cup in 1997 qualified us for the UEFA Cup, which in those days was a knockout competition. Leicester were drawn against Atlético Madrid.

“The European tie was really frustrating,” Kasey recalled. “We went to the Vicente Calderón and lost 2-1 but we played better than that score indicates. We still felt that, with the away goal, we could beat Atlético 2-0 at home, but in the home leg we were very disappointed with the refereeing standard. This took the match away from us. We lost 2-0. We could have accepted going out with a fight which was reflective of our performance.

“We were back at Wembley for the League Cup Final against Tottenham two years later. That was frustrating. We were playing very well and were the better side on the day. It looked as though it was going to go to extra-time. It could’ve gone either way, but they scored right at the end.

“The thing I really loved about my three years at Leicester wasn’t just about two cup finals or surviving in the Premier League, it was finishing in the top half of the Premier League three years in a row. We performed every year. I remember some great FA Cup games as well. I was most proud of all of this in that time at Leicester.”

Another source of pride for Kasey was playing for his country, which often necessitated transatlantic flights during the season. It was during his time at Leicester that his performance in the USA’s 1-0 victory over Brazil in the 1998 CONCACAF Gold Cup Semi-Final prompted Brazil’s Romário, the star of the 1994 World Cup and that year’s FIFA World Player of the Year, to remark that Kasey’s performance that day was the best he had ever seen from a goalkeeper.

In July 1999, despite his three successful seasons at Filbert Street, Kasey made the decision to move to Rayo Vallecano, newly promoted to Spain’s La Liga.

He subsequently played for Tottenham Hotspur, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Fulham and Seattle Sounders. In 2015, Kasey was inducted into the US Soccer Hall of Fame. This honour recognised the fact that, in addition to his club career at the highest level in England, Spain, Germany and USA, Kasey had a distinguished international career, winning 102 senior caps. He was an Under-20s international in 1989. He went to the World Cup Finals in 1990, 1998, 2002 and 2006. He featured in the 1996 US Olympic team. He was a CONCACAF Gold Cup winner in 2002, 2005 and 2007, a runner-up in 1998 and achieved third place in 1996 and 2003. And Kasey would be the first to acknowledge that his years at Leicester City were an important part of this journey.

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