By the time we reach the knockout stage of Euro 2020, there will have been seventy-two group stage matches. All but eight of the twenty four teams will proceed. Combined with the ever decreasing importance and quality of international football, it would be fair to describe each of these games as low stakes events.
Against this tepid backdrop, the sudden collapse of Christian Eriksen, during Denmark’s opening game against Finland, was even more jolting and distressing. It was also a reminder that footballers are indeed human.
Eriksen is 29 years old, has a girlfriend and is a father to two young children. He is an intelligent and multilingual young man who has made many millions of pounds for and from professional football. He must like and dislike and love and hate many things, has suffered through illnesses, attended funerals and washed his thinning hair, worrying about going bald.
I include this mudane list as a corrective to the way we usually talk, think and write about footballers.
We objectify, commodify and dehumanize these men and women. We feverishly pore over speculation of potential changes to their employers. We laud them and load them with heavy and unrealistic expectations. We numerise them; reducing them to ever less warm, ever more abstruse statistics. More than anything we dismiss, demean and abuse them.
Whether it’s racist Twitter screeds, classist rubbish in the tabloids or unfunny drive-by sardonics in broadsheets, the root is the same, players are ridiculous things to laugh at and abuse, disposable, replaceable non-people who deserve all of the flack they receive (and more).
Which brings us back to Christian Danneman Eriksen. Following his collapse, football will likely develop more stringent cardiac safety protocols. More testing, more doctors available at more games, more research. While these would all be welcome steps, if the authorities stop there then they have missed the point.
Acute incidents are only one type of risk. Before, during and after professional careers, players bend and snap ligaments and tendons, break toes and legs and eye sockets, have teeth knocked out of their heads and have to deal with the after effects of concussions. Football is a contact sport and some injuries are unavoidable but the sheer volume of games and the demands put on players increase the risks of long and short term injury considerably.
Before reaching the Euros, players at top European clubs may have already played fifty or sixty games during the season. This workload is as preposterous as it is profit driven. The damage caused by this approach will be felt by players and their families over the next thirty or forty years. Nineties striking great Gabriel Batistuta suffered such intense ankle pain after retirement that he would rather wet the bed than endure the short walk to the bathroom. Many great players from the sixties and seventies have suffered through the slow and steady loss of memory, capacity and self likely caused by non-existent head injury protocols and repeatedly heading the football.
Improving player welfare is something all football fans should care about. It should be far more central to our conversations about the present and especially future of the sport. In the meantime let’s all make sure we treat players with a great deal more empathy, kindness and respect.
