Netherlands football team coach Franck de Boer admitted that it was a “roller-coaster night” after he watched Danish footballer Christian Eriksen suffer a cardiac arrest on the field, before the start of his team’s opening match of Euro 2020. De Boer’s team were going to play against Ukraine in Amsterdam on Sunday.  

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“I had to leave the room”, said De Boer. Eriksen was once part of the Ajax team that de Boer coached. “I worked for five years with Christian and there are players in my team who still play with him or had a good bond with him when he played for Ajax.

“It was a roller-coaster night last night. We had planned to have a tactical meeting but we had to reschedule it for this morning because I didn’t want to speak about football”, said de Boer.

The Dutch team had several players who have played with Eriksen in club football. They won the match 3-2 against Ukraine in Group C after Denzel Dumfries scored a late winner. 

Fans in the stadium, Johan Cruyff Arena displayed banners with messages of support for the Danish footballer; one of them read, “Stay strong Eriksen”.

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The Dutch defender Daley Blind was in tears during the game, as he was substituted in the second half. Blind was also at the receiving end of a similar incident on the field when he was playing for Ajax. He underwent heart surgery after being diagnosed with myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

“Daley was quite emotional because he had some problems with his own heart”, said De Boer. “Even now Christian is one of his best friends and it is normal that there were lots of emotions so it was definitely not easy for us.”

Sources later confirmed that Eriksen had regained consciousness after he was taken to a hospital in Copenhagen.