Jose Mourinho has revealed he cried and prayed after watching Christian Eriksen collapse following a cardiac arrest while playing for Denmark at Euro 2020.
The Inter Milan midfielder,29, required 13 minutes of CPR after collapsing just before half-time against Finland on Saturday but was taken to a Copenhagen hospital in a stable condition.
Among those who watched the incident live on television was Mourinho, who coached Eriksen for two months at Tottenham.
‘Today I cannot stop thinking about what happened yesterday,’ Mourinho told talkSPORT. ‘I think it’s a day to celebrate, not to be sad.
‘Hopefully, football went in a direction where the organisation, the protocols the level of the doctors, and the specialists, and I also believe God was looking at football in that moment.
Everything together made Christian to be with us, to be with his family, to be alive.
‘It was much more important than football but at the same time I believe that it also showed the good values of football.
‘The love, the solidarity, family spirit. It was not just about his family it was about the football family. Football bringing people together.
‘I prayed yesterday, I cried yesterday, but how many millions did it around the world? I believe many because football can bring people together.’
Denmark team doctor Morten Boesen has since confirmed that Eriksen ‘was gone’ before being resuscitated – but the cause of the problem is currently unknown.
‘We did cardiac resuscitation, it was cardiac arrest,’ Boesen said. ‘How close were we? I don’t know. We got him back after one defib so that’s quite fast. We don’t have an explanation why it happened.’
