You can't shake the fear of Denmark's Christian Eriksson falling on the field during the Euro 2020 opener with Finland at Parken Stadium in Copenhagen on Saturday. Hopefully, you won't even shake the humanity that came after. Or the perspective that watching paramedics fight to save the life of a 29-year-old father – a fit athlete in the prime of his career – brings to us all. Sports, career, money… it all boils down to dust when faced with what really matters: life.
Perhaps that is why the moment resonated around the world, breaking down into its separate components:
Ericsson's companions form a human tentacle around his prone body, protecting him from prying eyes and, at the same time, protecting us from seeing the moment the light can go out. And all this without knowing whether it had really gone out and whether his gesture was the equivalent of pulling a sheet across the patient's face.
Ericsson's longtime partner, Sabrina Quist Jensen, the mother of his two children, wearing his number 10 national team jersey, consoled by his captain, Simon Kjaer, and his goalkeeper, Kasper Schmeichel, powerless, the width of a football pitch away. was going .
Paramedics are running across the field and working to do what they have been trained to do, something that should be routine for them, but which suddenly becomes the most important job in the world.
The supporters, shocked, uncertain, dressed in Finnish and Danish colours, some with their faces painted, some shirtless, were all horrified by what they were seeing.
And then, around the world in front of screens, whether it's TV or social media, the collective anxiety, hunger for updates. Mortality is a trait we all, rich or poor, share. And no, the fact that we have all, to some degree, spent the last 15 months battling a pandemic that has taken so many lives, does not prepare us. No when it is so. Not when it's so sudden.
Only then those who are blessed with faith - and some who are not - pray. Or put your faith in the logic and knowledge and skills of those working to save Ericsson's life. Or both. In those moments, waiting for the update, many of us thought about the cruelty of it all. The tournament, originally scheduled for last summer, was supposed to be a continent's first baby step on its way to some degree of normality, the first light of dawn after a long nightmare – and continues to endure.
In those moments, the people who love the game—and even those who give up for the moment—were alike.
Then the news broke. from UEFA. From the Danish Football Association. From Ericsson's agent.
He was conscious. he was talking. He was stable.
"I just spoke to Christian's father, and he told me he's breathing, and he's able to speak," Ericsson's agent Martin Schutz told Dutch radio.
"Moments like these put everything in life in perspective," UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin said in a statement.
As Denmark coach Kasper Hjulmund put it, "Christian is one of our best players, one of the best players out there, and he's an even better person. So, all my thoughts and all my positive energy goes to Christian." She goes."
Fans of Copenhagen's Parken Stadium, many of whom remained persistent, rejoiced, as they had previously done between Finns and Danes with the kind of call-and-response that makes you laugh. The match resumed. Finland won 1–0. And Christian Eriksson was awarded the Star of the Match award.
"Denmark lost. Life won." The Danish newspaper Ekstrabladet chose the same title for its Sunday edition. It was difficult to disagree.
The rest of us said thanks to God, to the medicine, to the men and women who cared for Ericsson. And we felt a little more connected and a little more human.