It was 259 days ago that Mathias Jensen came on for Denmark against Finland at the Euros, replacing Christian Eriksen, who had been carried away on a stretcher an hour and three-quarters earlier having suffered a cardiac arrest. That substitution was leant poignancy by its banality, an ordinary act in extraordinary circumstances. What nobody realised then was that it was a substitution that would echo forward as well as back: it was Jensen who went off on Saturday as Eriksen made his return to football, the sort of coincidence that hints at wider patterns and things that are meant to be.
“If you take away the result, I’m one happy man,” said Eriksen. “To go through what I’ve been through, being back is a wonderful feeling. It’s been very special since day one. Brentford have taken good care of me. Everyone’s been really happy about it and everyone’s been really helpful.”
Just as Denmark’s defeat to Finland last June felt almost irrelevant, so another setback for Brentford paled beside Eriksen’s return. For him, this was a day of mixed relief and celebration, for all he spoke of the need not to be “naive” about the defeat. “Everyone is here,” he said. “My family, my parents, my kids, my mother-in-law and some doctors who have been helping me back and forth. What they’ve been through is even tougher than what I’ve been through.”
What felt especially horrifying about what happened in Copenhagen was how ordinary it all appeared. A bright day, a pristine pitch, two sets of fans optimistic with the possibilities of a new tournament, but there, in a corner, screened by his teammates, a stricken Eriksen who, in his own words, “was gone from this world for five minutes”. Et in arcadia ego.
If there was a sense that day that death lurks even in the brightest, most positive atmospheres, there was a feeling on Saturday that hope can also exist in the everyday environment of a relegation battle played out in a low February sun.
Football can be a horrible game at times, played in a constant fug of tribal anger, but there are also occasions on which it is upliftingly sentimental. Everybody – Brentford fans troubled by their slump in form, Newcastle fans revelling in their longest unbeaten run in 11 years – rose to salute Eriksen’s return.
In the immediate aftermath of his collapse, all that mattered was whether he lived or died. Details came in scraps of rumours. A photographer had seen him raise a hand as he was taken away on a stretcher. A doctor had raised an optimistic thumb. A spokesman from the nearby hospital said he was critical but stable. Then his manager told a Danish radio station that Eriksen was out of immediate danger and talking to his wife and father.
That he might play again at the time was not even a consideration. But Eriksen has been able to return thanks to the Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) he had fitted a few days after his collapse. A slim device a little over two inches long, the ICD can send an electrical impulse to the heart if required.
Until relatively recently, people with ICDs were advised not to undertake exercise more strenuous than a brisk walk, but a Yale University study revealed that, although 10% of the 440 athletes they researched required a shock while participating in sport, the ICD worked in every case and none suffered any ill-effects.
Eriksen had to leave Inter because the regulations of the Italian Football Federation will not allow players with ICDs to play, although a number of players, most notably Ajax’s Daley Blind, have successfully played with ICDs.
Although it would be unfair to expect too much, Brentford could be the beneficiaries. There were a couple of neat passes but also some moments of ponderousness and occasions when his touch failed him. But that’s only natural; any player returning after almost nine months out would take time to rediscover their form. There is little doubt Brentford, who have scored four goals in their past eight games, need his creativity.
Eriksen knows how far he still has to go. Having got over the enormous hurdle of getting back on the pitch, his aim now, he said, is “first of all to get the feeling and touch back, that football feeling – and to help Brentford stay in the Premier League.”
