Eriksen on way to be the best
> Tottenham midfielder’s crowning performance proves he has taken the next step up for club and country
WHEN THE Tottenham Hotspur players start getting ready in the Emirates dressing room tomorrow morning, for a match that is bigger in international profile than Tuesday’s World Cup play-off but won’t on this occasion have the same profound consequence, they are still likely to see the exact same Christian Eriksen as his Danish teammates did in Dublin.
They will see someone so supremely composed, so utterly unruffled by anything.
He was asked after singularly devastating Ireland on Tuesday whether he felt any pressure before the game, only to answer “nope” with a notbothered smile, before then offering the exact same response when asked whether he ever feels any pressure at all. “Nope.” Even when he came out of the Lansdowne Road dressing room, Eriksen wasn’t exactly leaping around like some of his teammates. He was taking it in his stride.
It’s tempting to wonder what Arsenal legend Dennis Bergkamp thought of Eriksen when he coached him at Ajax – and what he thinks of him now – given that they seem of such a similar mindset.
This is also the mindset that fired that magnificent hattrick in Dublin when the pressure genuinely was on – or, at least, on for everyone else – and is now only emboldening the rising star who is maybe the best playmaker in the world right now and well on his way to being one of the best players in the world.
It did feel like the performance against Ireland and the profound consequence it had properly crowned a spell where a hugely talented player has taken a proper step-up in his career to really maximise that talent.
Teammate Nicklas Bendtner was blown away by the emphatic nature and variety to the goals against Ireland, and how they displayed so many of his abilities.
It was talent applied to tangible and symbolic effect.
“He scored a great goal with his left and a great goal with his right and then he picked up a goal which probably should not have been scored but his running capacity is that good that he is always liable to arrive in the danger zone,” Bendtner said.
“He always seems to have the energy to move around the pitch.”
That latter point on his physicality is maybe something underestimated, but the way he hit such a sweet spot for his last goal so late in the game also reflects how he seems to be in something of a sweet spot in his career.
It is as if everything is fitting so well. Set to turn 26 in February, Eriksen is at that perfect point where he has a mature experience to go with an athletic peak, but also benefitting from the influence of two managers who are perhaps perfect for him.
The playmaker had already evolved so much under Mauricio Pochettino and the specific role the Spurs boss has for him, but it is as if Aage Hareide has realised now how to fully maximise that for the national team.
The Danish boss did sit down with Eriksen and Kasper Schmeichel to figure out a system that would get the best out of the side after the frustration of the ponderous football under previous manager Morten Olsen, and the numbers speak for themselves.
The playmaker hit just six goals in 57 matches under Olsen.
Under Hareide? It is now 15 in 18. It really is a Cristiano Ronaldo 2007-style leap. For all the talk of Eriksen again failing to produce for his national team after the first leg, those numbers suggest the type of display and effect we saw in Dublin was really an inevitability; that he was always going to come to this point in time.
“It’s been a bit of everything,” Eriksen himself said after the Irish game of his progress.
“My career has been going upwards and to be here, scoring a hattrick in a World Cup playoff, means a lot. For Spurs, the success we have had over the last few seasons has helped me a lot. That is something you want to take with you into the game.”
His teammates also take a lot out of his play, as Bendtner revealed.
“He is the guy who makes any team he plays for tick,” the striker said. “He is a top, top player.
“He has an eye for goal, he has an eye for assists. Those players are worth their weight in goal because they always contribute something special
“I know if I make a run and he has time on the ball, he is going to find me. That’s the way he plays. He is not a selfish player. He will play you in if that’s on but also has an eye for goal.
“He has grown into a leader for us and takes a lot of responsibility.”
Those close to the Danish squad say that the way he takes that responsibility is also inkeeping with his personality.
He doesn’t really say much in the dressing room, preferring to sit back and leave it to Simon Kjaer and Kasper Schmeichel, because he realises he has to lead by his feet.
It was something that Eriksen’s predecessor Brian Laudrup also told the Independent after the game in Dublin, as he expressed disbelief that Martin O’Neill gave him “the freedom of the pitch” in the second half.
You just can’t allow that with someone his manager is already describing as “one of the 10 best players in the world”.
Notably, neither Eriksen himself nor Bendtner would quite go that far.
“For me, he is a fantastic player, but can you compare him to the greatest in the game?” the former Arsenal player said. Denmark midfielder Christian Eriksen celebrates after scoring a goal during the World Cup 2018 qualifying match, second leg, against Republic of Ireland at Aviva Stadium in Dublin on Tuesday.
“It is about making that special moment happen and he is doing that more and more. That is what takes you to the next level.
“Christian has done amazingly this year and if he keeps going the same way, then you can start comparing him to these big players. The greatest players keep doing it year after year after year.” And game after game. This is also what adds an extra intrigue to this north London derby tomorrow, and something of an inversion of recent discussion.
After years when the question was whether he could replicate his club form for his country, the question will now be whether he can hurt Arsenal in the same way he did Ireland; whether he can keep it going; whether the Emirates will be imposed upon by a rising star in this kind of form.
Another stage is ready. – The Independent