He provides extra thinking time for all the United players around him.”īoth Eriksen’s and United’s stars have been in the ascendant Journalist Carl Anka, referring to United manager Erik Ten Hag’s habit of buying himself time when answering a question by saying “it’s clear” (from the Dutch phrase “duidelijk”), has described Eriksen as “Ten Hag’s duidelijk safety net made flesh. There were plenty of grim jokes about how his journey from death’s door to Old Trafford was proof that things can always get worse.īut since a thrilling if unlikely victory over their old foes Liverpool, both Eriksen’s and United’s stars have been in the ascendant. They lost their first two matches: the second of them 4-0 to, of all teams, Brentford, with Eriksen playing out of position and all at sea. Not that you would have known it from their start to this season. He could have stayed at Brentford, but Manchester United came knocking: and even if they are not the force of nature they once were, they are still one of the great clubs in world football. Off the pitch as well as on it, he was humble and understated, just as he has always been: values instilled in him by his parents and cherished ever since. And he did all this without ever acting the superstar. “He sets a certain standard for himself and the team,” said striker Ivan Toney, “and we have to come up to that, to play above that.” “You can always give it to Christian and he will find a solution,” added manager Thomas Frank. In the ten games before his debut, they’d scored four points out of a possible 30: in the ten games after it they scored 22. An incensed Williams reared up, realised who he was grappling with, and hugged him.īut there was more to Eriksen’s return than sentiment, no matter how sincerely held. The following week he and Norwich’s Brandon Williams tussled on the floor while challenging for the ball. On his debut the entire crowd, many of them moist-eyed, rose to applaud him.
But it was the distinctly un-elite Brentford who came in for him: a small club back in the top flight of English football for the first time since 1947.
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Inter Milan, his club at the time, had to let him go: he had been fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), which under Italian law precluded him from all professional sport.īefore Inter he had been at Spurs, and before that at Ajax: an elite player at elite clubs. But when the doctors said he could resume his career, he began to plan his comeback. The question as Eriksen was taken to hospital that day was not whether he would ever play again: it was whether he’d survive. He was - ironically - the heartbeat of the side The average boy next door with a talent for football that was far from average.”Įriksen wasn’t just any player. But he was also, in the words of Danish journalist Troels Henriksen, “one of us … the essence of normality. He was - ironically - the heartbeat of the side, the primus inter pares, the one spoken of in the same breath as the great Laudrup brothers. It was during a match between Denmark and Finland in June 2021 that Eriksen collapsed after suffering cardiac arrest, and his team mates formed a protective circle around his prostrate body as the paramedics worked to save him.Įriksen wasn’t just any player.
Now he is the centrepiece of a resurgent Manchester United team and almost certainly heading to his third World Cup in November. In this, as in so many other aspects of his game, the Danish footballer Christian Erikson is ahead of his peers.įifteen months ago, in his own words, he “was gone from this world for five minutes”, hovering in the borderlands between life and death. They say that professional Sportspeople die twice, the first time being when they retire.
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This article is taken from the October 2022 issue of The Critic.
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