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FOOTBALL

‘I’m fine — under the circumstances’: Collapsed Danish striker tweets from hospital

Christian Eriksen, the Danish football player who collapsed on the pitch in his country's opening Euro 2020 game, said that he was doing "fine" in an Instagram post from hospital on Tuesday.

Published: 15 June 2021 10:50 CEST
'I’m fine — under the circumstances': Collapsed Danish striker tweets from hospital
Danish striker Christian Eriksen tweeted a picture of himself in hospital. Photo: DBU

“I’m fine — under the circumstances, I still have to go through some examinations at the hospital, but I feel okay,” he wrote in a post accompanying a photo of him smiling and giving a thumbs-up while lying in bed.

In a scene that shocked the sporting world and beyond, the 29-year-old Inter Milan midfielder suddenly collapsed on the field in the 43rd minute of Denmark’s Group B game on Saturday against Finland in Copenhagen.

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Medical personnel administered CPR as he lay motionless on the field for about 15 minutes before being carried off the pitch and rushed to hospital. He was later confirmed to have suffered cardiac arrest.

“Big thanks for your sweet and amazing greetings and messages from all around the world. It means a lot to me and my family,” he wrote in Tuesday’s post. “Now, I will cheer on the boys on the Denmark team in the next matches. Play for all of Denmark.”

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FOOTBALL

‘We were put in a position’: Danish players on having to play after Eriksen collapse

Denmark's goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel and striker Martin Braithwaite on Monday lamented that they had to choose whether to restart the Denmark-Finland Euro 2020 match while they were reeling from Christian Eriksen's mid-game collapse.

Published: 14 June 2021 14:20 CEST
'We were put in a position': Danish players on having to play after Eriksen collapse
Denmark goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel (left) and teammate Martin Braithwaite (right) said that it had been unfair to force play to resume. Photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix

“We were put in a position, that I personally feel that we shouldn’t have been put in,” Schmeichel told Danish media at a press event in Helsingor north of Copenhagen.

“We had two options,” Schmeichel explained. “Either come back the day after (Sunday) at noon or continue the game.”

The Leicester City goalkeeper said he wished someone more senior would’ve said “that it wasn’t the time to take that decision, and that we should maybe wait until the day after to decide”.

“What has happened has happened, and hopefully they’ll learn from this,” Schmeichel said, as he praised what he considered the real “heroes” of the game, the medics.

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Barcelona striker Martin Braithwaite said the players would have “wanted a third option, because we didn’t want to play,” noting that the decision to resume the game was “not a wish”.

“It was one of the only possibilities we had, and we were told we should make a decision,” Braithwaite said.

The comments mark the first time since Eriksen’s dramatic collapse and cardiac arrest on Saturday in the game against Finland that his teammates have spoken to the press.

Eriksen’s condition is still “stable” and  “good”, Jakob Hoyer, the Danish Football Union’s communications director said, adding that the player remained in hospital.

The players were able to talk to Eriksen via a video call on Sunday, and he was also visited in the hospital by Schmeichel.

“He said in his own way that we should look forward to the game on Thursday (against Belgium). It meant a lot,” midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, who missed a penalty against Finland after the restart, told Danish media.

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