In the past nine months, Christian Eriksen has played more than 40 matches of high-level football, scoring for Brentford, Manchester United and Denmark. It would be a proud page in any footballer’s CV. But Eriksen has done all this since he died.
It was only for a few minutes, but they were the longest minutes of the lives of all who saw them elapse. A little while afterwards, Eriksen said: “I remember it all – except those minutes I was in heaven”.
Danish players run to Christian Eriksen’s aid (inset). Eriksen is back playing at the World Cup.Credit:AP
Eriksen is a highly accomplished Danish midfielder, loved everywhere he has played for his versatile game and humble outlook.
In June last year, in a Denmark-Finland Euros encounter at Parken in Copenhagen, his licence to roam took him to a throw-in in Denmark’s half. Without warning, he collapsed and lay motionless on the turf, not a muscle twitching.
Quickly, it dawned on the other players and the crowd that something was terribly amiss. Simulation was not his thing anyway. A hush fell over the stadium and teammates formed a kind of screen.
Defender Simon Kjaer rolled him on his side, which medics later said helped save his life. In the stadium, there was utter silence. One teammate cried, another prayed.
The first doctor to reach him, Morten Bosen, activated a defibrillator. “He was gone,” said Bosen said the following day. “We started the resuscitation and we managed to do it. How close were we to losing him? I don’t know, but we got him back after one [shock], so that’s quite fast.”
Extraordinarily, Eriksen was conscious and talking by the time he left the ground in an ambulance. He said to his partner on his way to hospital that he would probably not play the sport again. By the time the game was somewhat perversely re-started a couple of hours later, he was able to watch the last 10 minutes from his bed.
Other footballers have taken longer than that to upright themselves again from an ankle tap.
Eriksen had suffered a cardiac arrest due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. He had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator inserted. One impact was that he was unable to return to Inter Milan, his club at the time, because the device contravened Italian soccer regulations. It would have been academic to him at the time.
But after eight months of rehabilitation, Eriksen did come back. He signed a six-month contract with Brentford before being lured to Manchester United in the English Premier League. He returned to Parken to play an international for Denmark, and within two minutes of coming on, scored. Hans Christian Andersen couldn’t have written a better script, although his weren’t bad.
Eighteen months later, Eriksen is patient with questions about his oh-so-public near-death experience, but clear that he’s very much alive and would prefer to be regarded as a footballer again, not a freak.
“Well, it has luckily been a while now that people have mostly been talking about me as a football player,” he said. “It’s only when journalists start to ask about it that it gets mentioned again.
“So I’m just happy to be back as a player. So I’m just happy to be back as a player.”
Christian Eriksen in his Tottenham Hotspur days.Credit:PA
Those who have known Eriksen over his journey at Ajax, Tottenham Hotspur and now Manchester United as well as Denmark tell of a modest, dream footballer.
Danish coach Kasper Hjulmund is effusive. “On the pitch he is the rhythm,” Hjulmund said. “He has a fantastic capacity to feel the game, to combine short passes with long passes, to grasp of the intensity of the match. He’s always in position to receive the ball.
“He always has this smart command of how we’ll play the game. He fills in any open spaces. So he’s often there where we lack a player.
Christian Eriksen celebrates after scoring against Australia at the 2018 World Cup.Credit:AP
“And then he has some decisive qualities when finishing. My biggest problem is that I’d like to have him in more places on the pitch.”
Hjulmund said he would also like Eriksen pitchside with him because he positions other players so well. “And off the pitch, he’s just a fantastic guy, very nice, sociable and relaxed,” he said. “So, all in all, a fantastic player and a fantastic person to have around the squad.”
If you were to strip it all, back it’s simple; more than anything else, Eriksen just wants the ball. In Denmark’s 2-1 loss to France on Saturday, he had it 83 times and passed it at 88 per cent. This now becomes Australia’s problem. He and the Socceroos won’t bother with introductions; he scored against Australia in a 1-1 draw in the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Denmark have underwhelmed in their first two matches, but the compact nature of the World Cup format means that they still have a pulse. In any case, it has a man who – dare we say it – does a tidy line in resurrections.
“It was my dream to return, because I knew that I could do it,” Eriksen said. “And I was able to achieve it. So it’s lovely to be just a player once more.”
The last word can left to coach Hjulmund. “Christian is the very heart of our team,” he said. Just so.
