Christian Eriksen suffered a cardiac arrest while playing in Denmark's opening Euro 2020 fixture against Finland on June 12. After receiving emergency CPR on the pitch when his heart stopped beating, Eriksen then had to spend six days in hospital.
Fortunately, the Inter Milan midfielder recovered, and is now fitted with an ICD heart-starting device in case he suffers the same problem again in the future. He also managed to visit the Denmark squad upon his release from hospital, the Danish Football Union confirmed.
It remains unclear at the moment whether 29-year-old Christian Eriksen will ever play football professionally again.
Eriksen's ex-Ajax teammate Daley Blind was diagnosed with a heart condition in 2019, and is fitted with a similar ICD heart-starting device. Now playing with a pacemaker, Blind is also a part of Netherlands' Euro 2020 squad. He claims that it is possible for Eriksen to play football again, though this depends on how he recovers from the experience.
However, pundit and ex-footballer Graeme Souness questions whether the same will be true for the Danish midfielder.
Souness is an ambassador for the British Heart Foundation, and fully praised the medical experts that saved Eriksen's life while on air for ITV the evening of his collapse. The Scot himself suffered a heart attack in 2015 and underwent a triple-heart bypass in 1992 at the age of 38.
There are also more footballers that have suffered a cardiac arrest in the past. Fabrice Muamba miraculously survived after his heart stopped for 78 minutes in 2012, while playing for Bolton against Tottenham.
Marc-Vivien Foe though, died while playing for Cameroon when just 28 years old. Former England defender Ugo Ehiogu, a Spurs coach at the time, also died from a cardiac arrest in 2017, aged 44.
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