Euro 2020 - Denmark v Finland, Parken Stadium, Copenhagen, June 12th
Forty-three minutes into a game delayed for a year by Covid-19, Christian Eriksen received a throw-in and, suddenly, without contact from anyone, fell to the ground.
His Danish team-mate Simon Kjaer is the first to react, rushing over to Eriksen and putting him on his side to make sure his airways were open.
Seconds later, Kjaer is joined by two brothers. They are both doctors: one is Morten Boesen, the Danish team doctor; the other, his brother Anders, the stadium doctor.
When they get to Eriksen, a defibrillator is produced and together with heart massage, the player is revived. “He was gone,” Morten would later recall. “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.”
Finland’s captain Tim Sparv recalled, “You feared the worst; you thought he was going to die.”
While the medics worked on Eriksen, his Danish teammates formed a shield around him. It was created by Kjaer and Thomas Delaney and others quickly joined them in a protective circle to provide privacy as the stadium, rocking to noise only minutes earlier, became silent.
The players’ in the circle are shaken. Some stand with arms on hips, others with hands on their heads. Jonas Wind cries uncontrollably. Martin Braithwaite is offering prayers. All are united as the result of a football game is put into perspective.
Eriksen was stretched off the pitch and had successful surgery to have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) inserted.
The match itself? It restarted that evening at 44 minutes. The last two minutes of the first half were played with a five minute break before the second-half. In the game, Denmark had 22 shots (six on target); Finland had one shot on target, in the 60th minute by Joel Pohjanpalo, which resulted in the winning goal.
