LONDON: Christian Eriksen says he has no anxiety about playing his first match since a cardiac arrest and believes a return to England was perfect after the incident last summer.
The Denmark international has not played a competitive match since June 12, when he collapsed and in his own words was “gone from this world for five minutes” during a European Championship match against Finland.
After being fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator days after the incident, Eriksen had to be released by Inter Milan in December due to rules in Italy preventing athletes from competing with an ICD. He made a surprise return to the English Premier League with Brentford in January.
Bees boss Thomas Frank revealed on Friday the former Tottenham playmaker will play in a behind-closed-doors friendly on Monday which could open the door for him to be involved at Arsenal on Feb. 19.
“I do feel in my head and body that the excitement is coming, the adrenaline is coming more and more toward game time,” Eriksen said on Friday at his unveiling news conference at Brentford Community Stadium.
“No, if there was any anxiety I wouldn’t go back.
“If I wasn’t fully committed and feel like I am trusting of the doctors, trusting of my heart, trusting my ICD in me, then I wouldn’t go back. No, I feel 100 percent secure to go back.”
Eriksen trained with his teammates for the first time on Monday but was familiar with several of them who are Denmark internationals.
The 29-year-old Eriksen has previously worked with Frank in Danish age-group teams and yet had no ambitions to return to England before he suffered a cardiac arrest, having spent 6 1/2 years in the UK with Tottenham before leaving in January 2020. Unable then to play in Italy, he considered an England return the best alternative.
He passed the required medical checks and cleared to play in the Premier League with the ICD.
Daley Blind, Eriksen’s former Ajax teammate who also played for Manchester United, is a notable footballer to still play with a pacemaker.
“First of all, I felt from the beginning of this I needed to prove you can play with an ICD and if something that bad has happened, you can be returning to a normal life afterwards,” Eriksen insisted. “That is more the motivation for me, to show I am capable of that.
“At the same time, I haven’t forgotten how to play football. My body is still the same and my vision and ability is still the same. Of course it is about kicking on, getting used to my teammates and falling into the rhythm of the team.”
Eriksen excited to prove he can play after cardiac arrest
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Eriksen excited to prove he can play after cardiac arrest
- The Denmark international has not played a competitive match since June 12
- Eriksen made a surprise return to the English Premier League with Brentford in January.
FIFA announces $60 World Cup tickets after pricing backlash
PARIS: World Cup organizers unveiled a new cut-price ticket category on Tuesday after a backlash by fans over pricing for the 2026 tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Football’s global governing body FIFA said in a statement that it had created a limited number of “Supporter Entry Tier” fixed at $60 for all 104 matches, including the final.
It said the plan was “designed to further support traveling fans following their national teams across the tournament.”
FIFA said that the $60 tickets would be reserved for fans of qualified teams and would make up 10 percent of each national federation’s allotment.
Fan group Football Supporters Europe , which last week called prices “extortionate” and “astronomical,” responded by saying the FIFA was offering too little.
“While we welcome FIFA’s seeming recognition of the damage its original plans were to cause, the revisions do not go far enough,” FSE said in a statement on Tuesday.
Last week, FSE said ticket prices were almost five times higher than in 2022 in Qatar, describing FIFA’s pricing for 2026 as a “monumental betrayal of the tradition of the World Cup.”
“If a supporter were to follow their team from the first match to the final it would cost them a minimum of $6,900,” it said at the time, adding that World Cup organizers had promised tickets priced from $21 in a bid document released in 2018.
‘Appeasement tactic’
On Tuesday, FSE said FIFA’s partial ticketing U-turn exposed flaws in how prices for next year’s tournament had been set.
“For the moment we are looking at the FIFA announcement as nothing more than an appeasement tactic due to the global negative backlash,” FSE said.
“This shows that FIFA’s ticketing policy is not set in stone, was decided in a rush, and without proper consultation — including with FIFA’s own member associations.
“Based on the allocations publicly available, this would mean that at best a few hundred fans per match and team would be lucky enough to take advantage of the 60 US dollar prices, while the vast majority would still have to pay extortionate prices, way higher than at any tournament before.”
The organization also criticized the failure to make provisions for supporters with disabilities or their companions.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer echoed FSE, stating that FIFA’s cheaper ticket category did not go far enough.
“I welcome FIFA’s announcement of some lower priced supporters tickets,” Starmer wrote on X.
“But as someone who used to save up for England tickets, I encourage FIFA to do more to make tickets more affordable so that the World Cup doesn’t lose touch with the genuine supporters who make the game so special.”
Announcing the $60 tickets on Tuesday, FIFA said that national federations “are requested to ensure that these tickets are specifically allocated to loyal fans who are closely connected to their national teams.”
FIFA also said that if fans bought tickets for games in the knockout rounds only to find their team eliminated at an earlier stage, they “will have the administrative fee waived when refunds are processed.”
It added that it was making the announcement “amid extraordinary global demand for tickets” with 20 million requests already submitted.
The draw for tickets of all prices in the first round of sales will take place on Tuesday, January 13.
