A frightening medical emergency for Danish midfielder Christian Eriksen led to the suspension of the Denmark-Finland match at Euro 2020 Saturday. Eriksen collapsed on the pitch in the 42nd minute without contact, and players quickly rushed around him and called for medical staffers. Those staffers came running on and started treating Eriksen, giving him CPR. But the broadcast kept showing close-up shots of what was going on, taking some criticism in the process from viewers who found that disturbing and said they should have thrown to studio.
It should be noted that those camera decisions are made by the UEFA-controlled world feed, not individual broadcasters showing this. But it’s interesting that this led to criticism for everyone from ESPN to Univision to the BBC. At any rate, players formed a screen around Eriksen, blocking off some of the close-ups, and Eriksen was eventually stretchered off (he did appear to be conscious at that point, with a Reuters photographer seeing him raise his hand), and the match was suspended by UEFA. Here’s some of how that played out on ESPN:
UEFA later put out this statement:
And the Danish federation put out this statement:
https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1403767708949397506
UEFA also said that they’ll resume the match at 8:30 p.m. local (2:30 p.m. Eastern), citing a “request made by players of both teams”:
Our thoughts go out to Eriksen, his family, and his teammates.
[Reuters; photo from Clippit]
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.