It is an occupational hazard for a player and playmaker of Christian Eriksen’s quality. He tends to attract man-markers. Just not normally those of quite of the calibre of the top scorer in a European Championships and the second highest in a World Cup 2022. A forward who cost £107million and scored in a World Cup final was reinvented as Eriksen’s dedicated sentry. “Antoine Griezmann was following him,” the Denmark manager Kasper Hjulmand lamented after his side’s 2-1 defeat to France.
If that offers an echo of Bobby Charlton marking Franz Beckenbauer, and vice versa, in both 1966 and 1970, it was not all Griezmann was doing. He was assisting, for starters: France’s winner came from a lovely waft of his left foot, curling a cross that Kylian Mbappe forced over the line. There might have been an equally elegant assist earlier, Griezmann supplying the defence-splitting pass from his own half, Mbappe reaching top gear before he was unceremoniously upended by Andreas Christensen.
