European football championships | Jukka Raitala wondered why Christian Eriksen was acting until the shocking truth was revealed: “I saw his eyes”

Suddenly the stadium was dead silent.

Defender of Denmark Joakim Mæhle gives a sideline throw towards the team’s star player Christian Eriksen. However, what Mæhle doesn’t know is that Eriksen is no longer fully conscious. After a couple of reckless steps, he falls to the surface of the field in Copenhagen’s Parken stadium.

Mæhle rushes to his fallen teammate and immediately realizes the gravity of the situation. Eriksen has suffered a cardiac arrest.

No time at all, when the Danish team’s medical team is reviving Eriksen. Everyone quickly realizes that now a human life is at stake.

The Finnish defender also realized that Jukka Raitala. He was one of the first players to signal for help to Eriksen.

“I vividly remember how my first thought was, why is Eriksen filming? They had a ball,” Raitala recalls.

“Then I saw his eyes and realized that everything was not okay. A very arresting moment. Futis was quickly forgotten.”

Raitala has never seen the situation before.

Finland the first prestigious match in the history of the national football team at the 2020 European Championships on June 12, 2021 will be remembered instead of Finland’s 1–0 victory, precisely because of Eriksen’s cardiac arrest. The match was played to the end, even though there were two upset teams on the field.

Danish goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel and defender Simon Kjær were forced back into the game, even though only a moment earlier they were consoling Christian Eriksen’s girlfriend on the side of the pitch Sabrina Kvist Jensen what they could from their own shock.

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“Suddenly I had to go back to playing football. It seemed incomprehensible.”

It was also quiet in Finland’s booth. The booers let Denmark decide whether to finish the match or continue the next day. Raitala himself would not have wanted to continue the game.

“Suddenly I had to go back to playing football. It seemed incomprehensible. I don’t remember a more difficult situation to play football than after that moment,” Raitala recalls.

Supporters of Denmark and Finland were united by the tragic incident. One of Huuhkajie’s supporters gave the Finnish flag as a visual shield in the middle of Eriksen’s resuscitation. The Finns started shouting the first name of Eriksen, who was rushed to the hospital in the stands, to which the Danes responded by shouting the last name.

Although Finland won the match, there was no celebration in the Huuhkajie dressing room.

“For myself with that [voitolla] didn’t matter at least at that moment. It was hard to deal with that emotional roller coaster.”

Tragically After the Denmark match, the Finnish games continued in St. Petersburg, where Huuhkajat first faced Russia. Finland got off to a dream start in the fourth minute of the game Joel Pohjanpalo Raitala’s cross between three Russian players was headed past the goalkeeper Matvei Safonovin.

However, the assistant video referee had his say. Pohjanpalo was just fine offside.

“Good exploitation and concentration, yes, it was an incredible adrenaline rush for the whole team. I believe that if the goal hadn’t been disallowed, we wouldn’t have lost that game,” says Raitala.

The disallowed goal also woke up Russia, who eventually corrected the scores Alexei Mirantchuk with a goal in the closing moments of the first half.

In the final match of the group, Finland still had a chance for a place in the next round, but at the same time, they faced the strongest team in the group, Belgium, which was full of stars. Kevin de Bruyne, Eden Hazard’s and Romelu Lukaku’s was also found on the bench of the starred team of Thomas Meunier, Youri Tielemans and by Dries Mertens hard names like

Entering the match as underdogs, Finland managed to keep Belgium at bay until the 74th minute of the game, until by Thomas Vermaelen the header hit the post and bounced off the Finnish goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky through to the finish line. Romelu Lukaku finished the final score 2–0.

“It saddens me that the man I guarded [Vermaelen] headed that 1–0 goal. Yes, we were quite the party in that game. Rattan can still have a chest,” Raitala recalls.

Stripe, 35, played all three matches in Finland’s starting line-up at the European Championships. He ended his national team career in the fall of 2022. He currently represents Gnistan from Helsinki, which he moved to this season.

“It has been an incredibly hard achievement to get there. I’ve only started to understand its value better after a while since the Games”, Raitala recalls the EC experience.

“Even though there was Corona at the time and we were in a tight bubble due to the restrictions, it was still exceptional. We were the first to take Finland to the prestigious competition. I look back on that time with pride.”

For Raitala, the fact that he got to experience the games made the games even more special Joona Toivion and Paulus Arajuuren with. Born in 1988, the trio attended high school at the same time and traveled a long way together in Huuhkaj.

How then what happened to Christian Eriksen?

The now 32-year-old midfielder returned to top football. He was fitted with a pacemaker. With it, however, he could not continue his career at Inter Milan, which he represented at the time of the incident, as the rules in Italy forbade playing with a pacemaker.

Eriksen returned to the field in February 2022 in the English Premier League, in the shirt of London-based Brentford. Since July 2022, Eriksen has been playing for Manchester United. Now he is part of the Danish team in the currently ongoing European Championships.

Jukka Raitala says that he also talked about the stopping situation afterwards with the professionals. There was no fear left, but the eyes opened.

“Yes, the idea that life is here and now became clear. You never know what will happen tomorrow”, he thinks.