MY ACCOUNT
New Brentford signing Christian Eriksen feels in a “very good place” as he closes in on a competitive return to football after his cardiac arrest at Euro 2020.
The 29-year-old Denmark international midfielder has not played since the incident during his nation’s 1-0 loss to Finland on June 12.
Brentford signed Eriksen in January on a deal until the end of the season following his release from Inter in December, where he was ineligible for professional football in Italy after being fitted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) device.
Eriksen had been training with his former club Ajax and has now linked up with his new Brentford teammates although it is unclear when he will debut with manager Thomas Frank stating it will take a “few weeks”.
“Condition-wise and strength-wise I am in a very good place, it’s just the football touch that needs to come back and get up to speed,” Eriksen told the Brentford website. “We’ll see how my body reacts but I feel very good.”
Eriksen added: “It is the longest I have been without playing football – by far. I’ve been lucky that I haven’t had any injuries really. To be without football for six or seven months is a very long time.
“It’s been very difficult. You have to let it heal and not do anything and then I started the rehab programme. Then I touched a ball and I’m on a football pitch, smell the grass, football boots, then everything starts coming back. The excitement to be in the stadium and be with the team.”
Eriksen also said he initially thought he would never play football again after the incident at Euro 2020 but was convinced by doctors otherwise two days later.
“On the way to the hospital I told [wife] Sabrina I may as well leave my boots here,” Eriksen said. “It changed two days later. It was in the moment. I recognised what happened to me later on that night and the next few days.
“Then all the tests started and all the knowledge started to come in and all the questions were being asked ‘Can I do this? Can I do that?’ and listen to the doctors.
“Then after that it slowly took off in a way that if I can do tests with a doctor along the way then I can slowly get back to playing football. There were a lot of tests to see how the heart reacted to physical training again and luckily nothing came out of that and everything was good.
“Then, every month I could push it and then I could play. But the thing was hearing from the doctors that even with an ICD there are no limits, it just depends on the diagnosis and how you feel about it.”
