Keir Radnedge The question without an answer
To play or not to play? The insoluble question haunted Euro 2020 after Christian Eriksen’s traumatic onpitch collapse. Sad sports history indicates no easy answers, no simple formulae, no satisfactory response.
Denmark’s playmaker needed extensive treatment on the pitch at the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen in that tormented Group B match against Finland. The 29-year-old had been at the centre of the action in a goalless first half when he collapsed while running forward towards a throw-in.
Team-mates immediately summoned medical help, English referee Anthony Taylor halted the game and sent the Finns back to the dressing rooms while the distraught Danish players provided a shield around their stricken team-mate as he received CPR and defibrillator treatment.
Thankfully “we got him back,” as team doctor Morten Boesen said in understatement, and Eriksen was removed to hospital for further care, including the insertion of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) just days later. However, after a break of nearly two hours following his cardiac arrest, the match was resumed and Finland duly won 1-0.
But why was the match resumed then? Should it have been resumed at all? Would the Danes have been in their rights to refuse? Were they pressured by UEFA? If precedents existed, what were they?
Statements of officials and players indicate they were in no fit state to
Why was the match resumed then? Should it have been resumed at all? Would the Danes have been in their rights to refuse? Were they pressured by UEFA? If precedents existed, what were they?
render a coherent answer when UEFA presented the lose/lose ultimatum of resuming that evening or the following midday.
No one thought to ask whether they wanted to play on at all.
Later reflections suggested they would have been miserably content to leave a nightmare match behind them, take a point apiece (the match was goalless at the time) and move on with the rest of the group.
Old hero Peter Schmeichel, father of goalkeeper Kasper and a former European champion himself, considered UEFA’s clumsy approach “absolutely ridiculous.” He said:
“UEFA should have tried to work out a different scenario and show a bit of compassion, and they didn’t.”
The players, according to head coach Kasper Hjulmand, “were in a shocked condition and didn’t know if they had lost their best friend.” He added: “I have a sense we shouldn’t have played. The players were completely and emotionally devastated. We sat and hugged, everyone had experienced something very traumatic.”
As Barcelona’s Martin Braithwaite said: “There were lots of players who felt unable to play. We were in a bad place. We were told we had to make a decision. None of the options were good. We took the least bad one.”
Of course UEFA denied falling short on humanity and sensitivity. A spokesperson said: “UEFA is sure it treated the matter with utmost respect for the sensitive situation and for the players. It was decided to restart the match only after the two teams requested to finish the game on the same evening.”
Then, damningly, that anonymous mouthpiece added: “The players’ need for 48 hours’ rest between matches eliminated other options.”
FIFA used to have an extra-day option in the longer and larger World Cup, but that is far easier to manage in a single-venue host country. The misbegotten all-over-the-place staging of Euro 2020 presented a further hindrance to extraordinary circumstances.
Comparisons were drawn, in the subsequent hours, with the Fabrice Muamba incident at White Hart Lane, Tottenham, in 2012 when the Bolton Wanderers midfielder suffered a cardiac arrest and did not revive for 78 minutes. This was not the case with Eriksen.
German doctor Jens Kleinfeld, who treated Eriksen on the pitch, said: “About 30 seconds [after application of the defibrillator] he opened his eyes and I could talk to him directly. I asked him: ‘Well, are you back with us?’ He said: ‘Yes, I am back with you’ and ‘damn, I’m only 29 years old.’
“That’s when I knew the brain wasn’t damaged and he had fully returned.”
None of that mitigated the shock of the moment among the Danish players, officials and the fans in the stadium at what they had witnessed. In the past, knowledge of such events has not always been available or obvious or shared with players of other matches visited by similar fates – and much worse.
Take the Burden Park disaster in 1946, when 33 fans died and hundreds were injured in a crowd crush at an FA Cup tie between Bolton Wanderers and Stoke City. The game was interrupted and restarted twice with some of the bodies lying, covered, beyond the touchline as the game went on. No-one told the players – including Stanley Matthews – the extent of the disaster. Later they were devastated to learn the truth.
In 1985 the European Cup final between Juventus and Liverpool was played out in the Heysel Stadium in Brussels despite 39 deaths and many hundreds of injuries. A retaining wall had collapsed into an access bay as Italian fans retreated under the advance of a hooligan mob.
The players were not told the extent of the disaster and UEFA – them again! – and the Belgian authorities were virulently criticised for playing on. In fact, the reasoning possessed some logic. Playing the match kept the majority of fans in the stadium thus keeping the forecourt clear to treat casualties and ensure ambulance access. But Michel Platini, who scored the winning penalty, refused ever to go back.
No such option four years later at Hillsborough. Then the pitch itself was the disaster zone and, 22 years later, a seemingly never-ending trauma continues to enwrap the victims’ families.
The 1972 Munich Olympic Games continued despite 17 deaths after Israeli athletes and coaches were taken hostage by Black September terrorists. Some observers who opposed carrying on at the time have since changed their minds; but then, so have some who initially supported a resumption of the Games.
In 2003 FIFA insisted on playing out the last two matches of the Confederations Cup in France after the collapse during a semi-final and subsequent death of Cameroon midfielder Marc-Vivien Foe. This writer was present, thinking then and still believing that playing out the meaningless tournament was tawdry and tasteless.
The difference between these headline-grabbing disasters and the Eriksen incident is that, thankfully, the player was “got back” and can hopefully live a long and fulfilling life. But no one who was in the Parken Stadium will forget the events that afternoon when the football world stopped.
Sadly some other day, in some other stadium, somewhere else, the scene will be repeated. And the question without an answer will be posed again.