Euro 2020: England-Croatia Score and Live Updates
Only once the game, the last thing on their minds, had finished could Christian Eriksen’s traumatized Denmark teammates start to come to terms with the toll of what they had been through.
In the glare of the news media, Kasper Hjulmand, the coach, struggled to hold back tears. In the privacy of the locker room, his players sat and held one another. Some among their number were, Hjulmand said, “completely emotionally finished” by it all: the scene of their fallen teammate on the grass, their thoughts of what could have been, the decision to resume the match.
By that stage, they knew that their worst fears had not been realized. Earlier, the Danish squad had agreed, as they had waited inside the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, that they would not make a decision on anything until they had more details of Eriksen’s condition.
Though it did not seem so at the time, that came — thankfully — briskly. Within an hour or so of watching Eriksen collapse on the field, of rushing to his side, of shielding him from the cameras, a message came through from the city’s Rigshospitalet, not far from the stadium, that Eriksen was conscious. He was talking to his partner and to his father, his agent confirmed to Danish national radio.
UEFA, then, offered the players a choice: they could either complete their first game of Euro 2020 against Finland on Saturday night, or resume it on Sunday afternoon. They had decided, Hjulmand said, “to get it over with.
“They could not imagine not being able to sleep tonight and to have to get on a bus tomorrow and play again,” he said.
Not all of them had felt ready. Simon Kjaer, the captain and a close friend of Eriksen, had been one of the first to reach him after he slumped to the ground. He had placed him in the recovery position, to prevent him swallowing his tongue, and then arranged the rest of the squad to form a protective circle around Eriksen as the stadium’s medical team — as well as Denmark’s national team doctor, Morten Boesen — had tended to him on the field.
Many of the players had turned away, but they knew how urgent it was: Boesen confirmed that, after he had arrived, Eriksen had stopped breathing, and his heart had stopped beating. “When I got there, he was breathing and I could feel his pulse,” he said. “Suddenly that changed.”
Even once the news that his condition was stable had come through, Kjaer did not feel able to continue. He had been one of the first to comfort Sabrina Kvist Jensen, Eriksen’s partner, too. “Simon was deeply, deeply affected,” Hjulmand said. “He was in doubt whether he could continue, and gave it a shot, but it could not be done.” Denmark has said it will make counseling available to those players who feel they need it.
Though the trauma was most clearly felt by those closest to Eriksen, of course, the shock at seeing him collapse reverberated throughout the tournament. Roberto Martínez, the Belgium coach, admitted his team — scheduled to play its opening match only an hour after the Denmark game — had not wanted to “talk about football” as they waited desperately for news of a player many of his squad has called a teammate at club level. Romelu Lukaku, who dedicated the first of Belgium’s three goals against Russia to Eriksen, said he had been in tears.
England’s squad, watching as it waited for its first game today, has plenty of links to Eriksen — Harry Kane, the captain, played alongside him at Tottenham — and had watched in anguish, too. In Italy, where Eriksen plays for Inter Milan, his employers had been relieved to receive a message to the squad’s WhatsApp group from Eriksen, confirming that he was awake. These are just the first steps, though. For his teammates, his friends, and more than anything else for Eriksen himself, there is a long road ahead.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/13/sports/euro-2020-live-scores/