Mail Online

The small voice in Eriksen’s head will not go away

I rEMEMBEr the first team meeting I took when I returned to management at Liverpool after I’d had open heart surgery, 30 years ago. ‘If I fall over again I don’t want mouth-to-mouth from any of you. Just let me go,’ I told the players.

I was trying to break the ice but the year after that surgery was like nothing I’ve known before or since.

I was 38, still fit and athletic and had never previously felt ill in my life, yet I got a constant reminder of my own vulnerability every time I looked in the mirror and saw a big scar down my chest. It was a realisation of how fragile life is and emotionally it took me a good year to get back.

There were times — two or three occasions — when I found myself sitting watching television with tears running down my cheeks.

The memory of that experience tells me that it’s been a lot harder for Christian Eriksen (above) to get back into playing football than he has admitted publicly.

Yes, he will have had the best medical advice. But the nagging part of him will be thinking: ‘If I go back, it could happen again and if this time I don’t come out of it, I’ve got a young family, two young kids.’

I think Eriksen is a little maestro. You get him to play off the front and he will score goals, create goals because he’s got an eye for a goal and an eye for a pass. He’s an all-round really good football player. Today, he’s back with Manchester United at Brentford, who gave him his way back in, and he deserves every bit of the ovation he will get. He needed to find the courage to step back on the field when the small voice in his head will have been saying: ‘I’ve got a young family. Should I be doing this?’

FOOTBALL

en-gb

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://mailonline.pressreader.com/article/283412015478020

dmg media (UK)