There are now completely different images than expected that will be remembered from the first weekend of the European Football Championship. It is not the celebrating Italians in the stands of the Stadio Olimpico in Rome who make it 3-0 Azzurri committed like an act of redemption in the opening game. It is not the Swiss or Welsh people who celebrate the goal in Baku. Shocked Danish footballers who gathered like a trellis around their comrade Christian Eriksen, who lay motionless on the grass after a collapse in the game against Finland and had to be resuscitated, are remembered. The stunned spectators from both countries in the stands in Copenhagen are remembered, who under their make-up and their Viking helmets quickly suspected and had to endure for a long time that this is a matter of life and death.
What had not been debated about in the past few weeks: Is it allowed to hold an EM in the middle of the pandemic, spread across eleven countries? Who is allowed to go to which stages and why? And: Should this tournament really be called “Euro 2020” in summer 2021? Everything marginally suddenly.
Not only Corona can throw all certainties overboard in one fell swoop, that became the unexpected subtitle of the European Championship kick-off on Saturday evening.
Many have to react almost in real time when the unexpected overturns all plans: The TV stations, who now have to be asked whether it was right to zoom in on Eriksen’s girlfriend, as well as the functionaries who fear the continuation of their billion-dollar business, the needed a new schedule quickly. After Eriksen’s condition was stable again, both teams, Danes and Finns, decided to continue playing – at least that was the wording of the organizers: Uefa had “responded to a request from the players” and “agreed” to continue the game that evening. In fact, the Uefa officials probably pushed for the next noon.
But as a player you quickly dive back into the EM tunnel, you consider the consequences of a postponement (travel chaos, less regeneration …) – but you underestimate the consequences of the shock moment. That’s OK!says the person, but when in truth it just doesn’t work.
It was there, without wanting to compare the events in detail, of the nail bomb attack on the Borussia Dortmund bus in April 2017. It was also a matter of life and death, the Spanish player Marc Bartra had nails in Arm drilled. The BVB professionals were back in the Champions League the next evening. That’s OK. Only later did they have to admit: In truth, it was irresponsible to one’s own body to have to function again immediately.
Eriksen himself had given the all-clear
But Christian Eriksen himself had given a kind of all-clear when he was conscious again and in a stable condition. He communicated with parts of his team from the hospital. And a footballer in the hospital, as macabre as it may sound, it’s part of the routine again in the industry, even if a torn cruciate ligament or a broken metatarsal bone doesn’t bring those terrible minutes of uncertainty: whether it will even be able to be repaired.
In the end there were pictures that will now be remembered: The Danish goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel at 0: 1, as a harmless ball slipped through him under his body. The Danish leader Pierre Emile Höjbjerg, who shoots his penalty so weakly in the arms of the Finnish goalkeeper that he would be accused of something between total failure and treason, at least on Twitter, under other circumstances.
Clear rules are needed for such a situation
But: Hadn’t this soccer game only just made it clear that there are bigger dramas than goalkeeping mistakes and badly shot penalties? Just. The Danish team will be able to live with a loss to Finland given the much more important news that Christian Eriksen has survived the emergency.
But the organizers should give themselves clearer rules so that next time nobody has to continue playing in a state of shock, even if at that moment they are of the erroneous opinion that it will work.
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