Football’s own miracles – NRK Sport – Sports news, results and broadcast schedule
The powerful Swiss FIFA president loves to talk about the “power of football”. Which in his description of reality can bring peace to a divided, globalized world, nothing less. The last few days have shown that the power to those degrees exists, but in completely different forms than the ones Gianni Infantino is talking about.
Today we get the football moment no one thought you should experience. No one, except the main character himself.
290 days is the time from 12 June 2021 to 29 March 2022.
It is the time from Danish Christian Eriksen fell over in the Park in Copenhagen during Denmark’s first European Championship match against Finland until he again runs onto the same lawn as the Danish captain against Serbia.
FELL: The Danish national team players called Christian Eriksen when he collapsed in the Park on 12 June 2021.
Photo: WOLFGANG RATTAY / Reuters
For the first time in 17 years, the Danish national arena is sold out for a private international match, when an entire nation will celebrate the return of its great hero.
In this case, we could actually use the word “resurrection” instead.
It was after 41 minutes in the match against Finland that Eriksen collapsed as he ran to receive the throw-in from left-back Joakim Mæhle. The heart has stopped.
Lives are saved by extremely resourceful teammates and health personnel inside the stadium. Nevertheless, Eriksen is clinically dead for five long minutes.
Fiancé Sabrina ran crying out onto the field, where she was taken care of by captain Simon Kjær and goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel.
The fear that Denmark’s European Championship debut at home would end in absolute tragedy was subdued in the hours after Eriksen was carried out of the Park, surrounded by his teammates in a protective circle.
SCORED: Christian Eriksen came on the field for Denmark’s national team on Saturday for the first time since the cardiac arrest during the European Championships last year. He scored after two minutes.
Photo: KOEN VAN WEEL / AFP
Life’s own leadership
It was last Saturday when Christian Eriksen was back with Dannebrog as symbolic protection over his hard-tried heart, in the settlement against the Netherlands in Amsterdam.
Eriksen was replaced during the break against the orange-clad. Minutes later, his old home ground, Johan Cruijff ArenA, exploded in unison cheering, after the Danes’ number 10 in the artist’s way had put the ball in the far corner and reduced the Dutch lead to 3-2.
His 37th national team goal was by far the most important, even though it came in a paperless insignificant private international match.
Both the Netherlands and Eriksen’s Denmark have long been ready for the World Cup. The goal was therefore about something completely different.
It was not Denmark that was reduced. It was Life that went up in an impregnable leadership.
SUBSTITUTED: Eriksen was substituted at the break in the international match against the Netherlands in Amsterdam. Then the home team led 3-1, but he just needed a minute and 50 seconds to reduce beautifully. It was the big highlight of a match the Netherlands won 4-2.
Photo: JOHN THYS / AFP
The incredible return
For the idea that Christian Eriksen should ever return to a football field was non-existent for everyone.
With one exception: Eriksen himself.
For when he early in 2022 for first time talked about his desire to not only play football, but also wanted and believe that he will play the World Cup in Qatar for Denmark, it still seemed completely unrealistic.
Less than three months later, Danish experts already have concluded with that the Danish offensive is secured. Well, one can concentrate on solving the defense problems. The reason is called Christian Eriksen.
It can be called an exceptional will. Or a miracle of football.
Non grata i Italia
The club career in the Italian champions Inter had to end. Eriksen has had surgery on what is popularly called an ICD, or «Implantable Caridoverter Defibrillator», ie a kind of mini-defibrillator.
Italian rules for professional football play when you have one.
But if the Italian football was finished with Eriksen, then Eriksen was not finished with the football. The sober fynbo was very clear that if the perspectives on life are changed forever, was not the case for the ambitions as football players.
“I have always shown who I am as a player. I’m always the same », as Eriksen himself put it at yesterday’s press conference in the Park.
And after training at Ajax, the club that made him famous went back to the Premier League. Eriksen had several offers, but chose to stop playing under his old youth coach Thomas Frank in Brentford.
NEW CLUB: Christian Eriksen for Brentford and manager Thomas Frank in the Premier League.
Photo: DAVID KLEIN / Reuters
On February 26, the Danish midfielder was on the field again for Brentford against Newcastle.
Exactly one month later, he played his 110th international match for Denmark.
Well, he’s back in Copenhagen for the even more emotional 111th – and that as captain. Simon Kjær is injured. Vice captain Kasper Schmeichel, who had even gone to national team coach Kasper Hjulmand and suggested that Eriksen should wear the captain’s bandage.
Preferably before 18 this Tuesday you get instant which can give everyone a kind of hope. Then Christian Eriksen leads Denmark’s 11 selected men out in front of 38,000 cheering and most of all grateful spectators.
Now there is no one who no longer doubts that Denmark’s number 10 in the World Cup in Qatar is called Eriksen. With its biggest star left, Danes can once again think the crazy thought that they actually have the capacity to become world champions.
After Eriksen’s collapse, his Denmark continued to play in last year’s European Championships to honor his teammate, who was treated at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen.
The collective power brought them all the way to the semi-finals, where they lost to England at Wembley after extra innings.
But it was Italy who quite surprisingly became European champions.
Italian pain, northern Macedonian miracle
The country that in many ways can be called the world’s most glorious football nation is the country where Christian Eriksen is no longer fit to play football.
But it is also the country that is not going to the World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
Two days before Eriksen’s national team comeback in Amsterdam, ironically, the Italian World Cup chances sensationally disappeared after their first home loss in a World Cup qualifier ever.
Opponent in Palermo was Northern Macedonia, a real football putt.
What for the northern Macedonians is pure magic, is for the Italians a real football tragedy.
For the second time in a row, they are out of a World Cup play-off. Since winning the World Cup in 2006, Italy has won a single match in a World Cup final, against England in Brazil in 2014.
Well, the four-time world champion will spend the next four years on national football pain, combined with the dream of a new playoffs.
We also have that dream here further north.
Ståle Solbakken also played football in Copenhagen when his heart stopped training in 2001.
It took seven minutes before it started to strike again. For Solbakken, it meant the end of the football game at the top level. Instead, it was started on a glittering coaching career, where the next goal is to once again qualify Norway for a championship.
No one is in doubt anymore about what such an achievement would be called in that case.
The result of an exceptional will. Or a miracle of football.