Christian Eriksen Made Us Believe
When the Danish midfielder took the field for Brentford last weekend, he proved the unstoppable spirit of human nature.
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If the past few weeks have taught us anything (really, I should say the past few years) it’s that anything can change in a single moment. It’s true in life, in ways both frightening and inspiring, but it’s also one of the things that I’ve always been drawn to about sports: Any lead can be overcome, any team can be beaten, any player can rise to the moment.
But I can’t remember any sporting moment shifting my perspective quite like the one I watched last Saturday, 59 minutes into an English soccer game that otherwise would have barely registered for an American sports fan. That’s when Christian Eriksen subbed onto the field for Brentford against Newcastle. Everyone in the stadium stood and cheered. The players stopped and clapped too. An opponent jogged over and gave Eriksen a high five. For his part, Eriksen didn’t smile, didn’t wave, and didn’t do much of anything to acknowledge the enormity of the moment. But surely he had to be getting goosebumps, too.
The moment came 259 days after Eriksen suffered a cardiac arrest in Denmark’s opening game of the Euros, 259 days after doctors said he had “died” for five minutes, 259 days after Eriksen describes that he spent time “in heaven.” People take longer to recover from torn ACLs, but less than a year later, Eriksen was delivering his signature through balls and playing in the Premier League again. Even if he does nothing else in his career, his is already the greatest comeback story in sports history.
259 days prior, Eriksen didn’t think he’d ever play soccer again. Nobody did. If you haven’t seen the clip of his cardiac arrest yet, don’t. It’s terrifying. One moment Eriksen is leading his native country in front of a home crowd. He is Denmark’s star player, and many of the fans in the Copenhagen stadium that day were wearing his jersey, pinning their hopes to his ability with a soccer ball at his feet. Then, suddenly, he collapsed to the field lifeless. A teammate performed CPR. Medics resuscitated him. The only thing anybody could have hoped for that day is that Eriksen would live.
When he regained consciousness, lying on the field surrounded by doctors, Eriksen had no understanding of what was going on. He felt like he had woken from a dream. He thought he must have broken his back. He made sure he could still wiggle his toes.
Soon, doctors were explaining that in the middle of the game, Eriksen’s heart had simply stopped. As he rode in the ambulance the short drive from the stadium to Copenhagen’s main hospital, still in his uniform, he looked at the paramedics. “Keep my boots,” Erisken told them. “I won’t be needing them.”
But after arriving at the hospital and receiving an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), Eriksen started to learn more about what life could look like with an ICD, which essentially shocks your heart if it stops beating. He read about a man who has run 12 marathons since receiving a similar device. From his hospital bed, Eriksen texted Daley Blind, a midfielder who plays with an ICD for the Amsterdam club Ajax. “What can I do with this?” he asked.
The answer, for Eriksen, is that there are no limits. He was discharged from the hospital, and soon was training with Blind at Ajax. He later joined Brentford, where he’ll play for his former youth coach. “I feel like me,” Eriksen says. “I don’t see any reason why I couldn’t get back to the same level.”
What’s next? He’ll finish the season for Brentford, who’s fighting to stave off relegation, and then turn his focus back towards his national team. His dream is to put on his red Denmark jersey once again and take the field in Qatar for the World Cup later this year. “I want to play,” he says of the tournament. “It’s a goal, a dream.”
But first came the game Saturday. “Being back is a wonderful feeling,” said Eriksen afterwards, in what is surely the understatement of the century. His family was in the stands. So were the doctors who saved his life. They cheered in the stadium, and we cheered along at home. Because 259 days after everything changed for the worst, at the end of a week that showed some of the worst of humanity, it took Christian Eriksen all of one moment to make us believe once again that the human spirit can always prevail—no matter the circumstances.
🇺🇦 Dan LeBatard is now best known as a radio host, but he got his start as a writer. He was a damn good one then, and he’s a damn good one now. This week, he dusted off the keyboard and wrote a column about sacrifice and heroism when discussing the Klitschko brothers decision to fight for Ukraine. (On the radio front, LeBatard’s interview this week with former running back Ricky Williams was a moving and insightful look at media and leadership.)
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🏀 Wright Thompson on Coach K is predictably great. “His ambition made him let go of a brass ring to reach for a gold one,” writes Thompson. On the eve of Coach K’s final tournament run, you have to read this.
🏏 On Sunday, India and Pakistan will play the latest edition of one of international sports’ great rivalries when they face each other in the opening match of the Women’s Cricket World Cup. Here's what's at stake.
⚽ RIP Stanford goalkeeper Katie Meyer, who died tragically this week. We’ll never forget the passion she showed when stopping a goal in the 2019 National Championship.
