The prize for a team still reeling emotionally? A date with the top-ranked soccer team in the world.
That’s the situation Denmark finds itself in at the European Championships. Just a few days after experiencing one of the most horrific things any athlete can witness, the players must regroup and face Belgium, the No. 1 ranked men’s team.
The events over the weekend in Copenhagen were a stark reminder that the athletes who entertain us are not windup toys or video game avatars that can be deployed and manipulated without human emotion. Players in all sports are routinely attacked on social media, taunted — England’s players were booed in London for taking a knee as an anti-racism gesture before their game with Croatia — or even pelted with objects.
But they are flesh and blood, heart and brain, sweat and tears. On Saturday, many, many tears.
If you aren’t paying attention to the Euros, one of the great tournaments in sports, you might have missed what happened Saturday. Christian Eriksen, Denmark’s star 29-year-old midfielder who plays for Inter Milan, and before that Tottenham, collapsed face first on the field on a routine play.
According to doctors, Eriksen basically died on the field before being revived through defibrillation and CPR.
“He was gone,” team doctor Morten Boesen said. “It was cardiac arrest. How close were we? I don’t know. We got him back after one defib. That’s quite fast.”
His teammates circled the fallen player to shield him as medical experts worked on him. Many wept and prayed. Team captain Simon Kjaer has been credited for preventing Eriksen from swallowing his tongue, and then he and goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel ran to the sideline to help comfort Eriksen’s panicked partner.
The images were of intense humanity and fear; that terror subsided only slightly when Eriksen, with his eyes open, was whisked off the field. It was difficult to process what had happened. Eventually word came that Eriksen had been stabilized in a nearby hospital. The outcome was a testament to the quick work of both medical professionals and Eriksen’s teammates.
After 90 minutes, the players returned to the field and the game resumed. Denmark lost to Finland 1-0. In the aftermath, the Danish players said they were put in a thankless position, having to decide whether to resume the match or restart it the next day at noon.
“We were put in a position which I personally don’t think we should have been put in,” Schmeichel said.
Striker Martin Braithwaite said, “We had two options. None were good. We took the least bad one. There were a lot of players that weren’t able to play the match. They were elsewhere” mentally.
Others have suggested the game should have been called and authorities should have taken a few hours — not just 90 minutes — to decide the best option for continuing. The situation was rare and required delicacy. But UEFA officials defended their choices.
Also coming in the aftermath was wild speculation on social media, because of course there was — it’s 2021. A theory was put out that Eriksen collapsed due to a reaction to the coronavirus vaccine. Inter Milan’s director dismissed that speculation, saying Eriksen has not been vaccinated, nor has he tested positive for coronavirus.
Doctors are still trying to determine what caused Eriksen’s heart to stop. The cardiologist for Tottenham has gone back and pored over Eriksen’s past EKGs when he was a member of the team but found nothing unusual.
The soccer world — and much of the sports world — has rallied around Eriksen. When the game was restarted, the Finnish and Danish fans chanted “Christian!” “Eriksen!” back and forth.
“He understood how much love is around,” his agent Martin Schoots told an Italian newspaper. “Messages have reached him from all over the world.”
One message came from his team’s next opponent. Belgium’s star forward Roman Lukaku is Eriksen’s teammate at Inter Milan. When he scored the first of Belgium’s three goals against Russia on Saturday, he ran directly to the camera and looked in it, as though searching for his friend’s face, calling, “Chris! Chris! I love you!”
After the game, Lokaku spoke of how hard it was to play a game not long after his friend collapsed.
“It was really tough for me to get my mind together,” he said. “I spend more time with him than my own family. I was thinking of his family, his kids. Seeing him go down like that, representing his country, was very, very tough. It was difficult to focus.”
On Thursday, Denmark and Belgium will face each other. And though Eriksen was feeling well enough Monday to speak to his teammates by video chat, the memory of his collapse will linger over the game and all the players.
These are humans, after all. Even if the public sometimes doesn’t treat them that way.
Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion
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