Eriksen makes fairytale return for Denmark with typically classy goal
LESS than two minutes, it took him. The brutal truth? The last time Christian Eriksen played for Denmark, he was dead for longer than that. They feared he was gone that day last June. They prayed, they wept, they dreaded the worst as Eriksen’s life evaporated before our eyes.
For three to four minutes — the lost minutes, as he calls them — death knocked at his door. For 287 days we wondered when — or if — we would see Eriksen in Denmark colours once more. And then after half-time last night, the 1,000 Danes who travelled for this friendly with Holland waited only 114 seconds to find out: Eriksen is back all right.
All of the pain and all of the trauma and all of those harrowing scenes will not be erased with one sweep of his right boot.
But perhaps Denmark coach Kasper Hjulmand put it best when he recently described the past year as ‘a horror film, but also a fairytale.’ How else to explain what happened back in Copenhagen and here last night?
A blend of disbelief and delirium swept through all four corners of the Johan Cruyff Arena when Andreas Skov Olsen cut the ball back and Eriksen curled it home.
The playmaker had said it felt like he’d never been away these past nine months. Perhaps that explains how he so seamlessly stepped back to the future. The only, hidden, mark of change? That implantable cardioverterdefibrillator designed to ensure memories like these are the only
ones he will now leave.
Perhaps only fate could decide, too, that Eriksen should be here to close the new chapter of his life and re-open the old. Back in red and white, back at the ground where, for Ajax, his genius first captured hearts and minds.
It is symbolic that normality will reign again — as Hjulmand said — after Tuesday’s friendly with Serbia in Copenhagen. At Parken, where Eriksen first stumbled. Where his heart stopped. Where he woke up and wondered: ‘Have I broken my back?’
Where he was whisked into an ambulance and, on the threeminute drive to Rigshospitalet told medics: ‘Keep my boots, I won’t need them.’
How wrong he was. Eriksen remembers everything from that day. ‘Except those minutes when I was in heaven.’ Anyone here last night will do well to shed this memory. Coronavirus had briefly delayed Eriksen’s return before Hjulmand made everyone wait a little bit longer by naming him on the bench. Nothing, though, could cloud the air of renewal last night.
A roar went up when Eriksen was given a special welcome by the announcer. Another ovation came when his name was read out.
The big screens carried his picture and the message: ‘Welcome Back.’
On the pitch, the 30-year-old was embraced by Holland coach Danny Blind, whose son Daley wears a defibrillator — and who last night set up Steven Bergwijn’s opener once a football match broke out. With Denmark trailing 3-1 at halftime, Eriksen emerged from the tunnel for his final preparations.
This place cheered then, and again when he stood on the sideline. And again when the substitution was read out in English. Again when it was announced in Dutch. And then the goal. Special.