Nearly two hours after Christian Eriksen’s heart stopped during Denmark’s game against Finland Saturday in Euro 2020, the teams returned to the pitch and resumed their match, a decision that they now are questioning.
Soccer officials said that players were consulted and wanted to resume play, coming to a decision that one official said was “the least bad” one available under the circumstances. Eriksen is stable and undergoing tests in a Copenhagen hospital, but the sight of him receiving CPR and defibrillation on the pitch, shielded for privacy by his stunned teammates, remains unnerving.
“We were put in a position which I personally don’t think we should have been put in,” goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, who comforted Eriksen’s wife on the pitch as he was being treated and visited Eriksen in the hospital Sunday, told reporters.