With just over 52 minutes played in sunlit west London, as Brentford’s 10 men reckoned with a 2-0 defeat that will have huge implications on their Premier League survival, Christian Eriksen emerged from the shadow that has dominated the past eight months of his life. If the horrifying images of his collapse last summer had already been banished from Eriksen’s own mind, they remained intact for those who were fortunate enough to witness the midfielder’s return here. This was a moment that was impossible to envisage then, when the unimportance of a football match was thrust so jarringly into perspective, and felt no less astonishing now as Eriksen ran onto the pitch and past the memories that threatened to define him.
Amid all the emotion around his return, there remained a residual sense of apprehension that couldn’t be extinguished until this moment. There is still the small defibrillator fitted in Eriksen’s chest as a permanent assurance. He unwillingly represents the innate fear hidden within all of us that the lives we build can be upended at a moment’s notice – a fact that could hardly be more pronounced in the world right now. And it is a beautiful contradiction that while football can be so utterly irrelevant, here it also represented such a meaningful escape. Each time the ball arrived at Eriksen’s feet, with his presence alone restoring an urgency to Brentford’s ailing attack, it was no longer about miracles but simply the stakes of the match – the return to normality he has craved most of all.
