‘HE WAS GONE'

Footballer Christian Eriksen’s brush with death has shocked the sporting world

- DENNIS CAVERNELIS

ALL major sports tournaments deliver moments of high drama but what happened on only the second day of Europe’s biggest football tournament was the kind of drama no one wanted to see.

A player in peak physical condition staggers in the 43rd minute of the first half in the Denmark vs Finland game during the highly anticipated Euro 2020 tournament. Christian Eriksen (29) then collapses on the pitch and some of his teammates rush up to him – including Simon Kjaer, who realises the severity of the situation and starts applying CPR.

Danish players call frantically for help and the game is stopped immediately. Medics go to work on him as his teammates form a human shield around him and fans look on in shock and horror.

“He was gone,” an emotional Morten Boesen, the Danish team’s doctor, said afterwards. “We did cardiac resuscitation. It was cardiac arrest. How close were we [to losing him]? I don’t know.”

For Eriksen’s partner, Sabrina Kvist Jensen (28), it was a nightmare. She clambered over the barrier as medics worked on the father of her two kids for 13 minutes and Kjaer and other team members rushed to comfort her.

“She thought he had died,” Denmark’s goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel said.

Kasper’s father, Peter, a former Manchester United player and a commentator at the game, concurs. “Sabrina actually thought he’d passed away. To confirm [Eriksen was still alive], Kasper went back to be absolutely sure he wasn’t saying anything that was out of order. By then, Christian was talking to the doctor.”