Copenhagen, Denmark – Ulrich Ammundsen was once shocked and perplexed about what he noticed and what he was once feeling and what he will have to have carried out. Danish megastar Christian Eriksson collapsed at the flooring simply prior to halftime for the workforce’s game towards Finland. Viewed from the stands, Ammundsen noticed the participant crumpled, noticed him taking a look limp, noticed his teammates circle round him as medics driven on his chest.
When Ammundsen arrived house right here very overdue remaining Saturday night time, he discovered himself staring into his toilet replicate, not able to procedure what had came about hours previous.
Even after Ericsson was once taken to the sanatorium, and after phrase got here that Ericsson was once alive and solid, Ammundsen – who’s a bunch town supervisor for Fan Zone in Copenhagen – processed his emotions. struggled to do. He sought after to mention one thing, to specific one thing, how he felt for Ericsson, to inform Ericsson how a lot his implausible luck intended to the Danish other folks. Wanted to make it transparent how onerous he had labored to get Ericsson to face once more.
Ammundsen didn’t understand how. So that night time, when he in any case went to sleep, nonetheless the roller-coaster of feelings he had skilled in his thoughts, he had an concept. There is a wall within the fan zone, he informed his spouse within the morning. Ericsson’s image is already on it. What if the wall, he stated, was once become an enormous letter to Ericsson from each and every Dane who desires to signal it?
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He went to paintings. He informed his comrades. Everyone liked the speculation, concept it could be profitable and healing. Ammundsen then learned that he had no hint and hurriedly referred to as his spouse to invite him to take some. She went to the grocery store and dropped them off on the administrative center close to the port, and on Sunday morning, the primary particular person — a person who coincidentally was once within the fan house with a gaggle of people that had a center assault — picked up a marker and Ericsson despatched a message. Wrote. Then any other fan did. and the opposite. and the opposite.
Ammundsen stood again and watched. “I wanted to give everyone a chance to send a message,” he says now. “And here it is.”
Much remains to be unclear about that Saturday, such a lot in order that we nonetheless do not know as Denmark prepares to play once more towards Belgium right here on Thursday. What came about that led to Ericsson to have a cardiac arrest? And when the Doctor is in a position to heroically revive him, what does it imply for his existence to transport on?
Those questions will take extra time. What we do know evidently is the intensity of emotion that unfold throughout this nation once Ericsson fell. The football here’s a level of implausible delight for the Dane, and Ericsson’s luck – first with Ajax within the Netherlands, then with Tottenham within the Premier League or Inter Milan in Italy this previous season – has lengthy been one thing Danish enthusiasts can revel in. . Hav Eriksson – in 1992, the 12 months Denmark gained its most effective Euro, within the small the city of Middlefart – led the workforce to the match, the place Denmark is in a position to play a Euro game in its house stadium for the primary time. supply of nationwide pleasure.
Then all of sudden that happiness was once bring to a halt. Patrick Hof Son, a 32-year-old Danish fan, sat a half-dozen rows from the world the place the incident came about, and says he first of all concept Ericsson may have fainted or fainted because of dehydration. However, this most effective lasted a couple of seconds, as a result of as soon as the docs started acting CPR, there was once an eerie silence within the stadium—”the silence of a graveyard,” he says—and Gold felt unwell.
“I saw Christian Eriksson’s girlfriend” a couple of strains away, Son says, and he or she “was carrying” [one of] Their young children are in her lap.” A friend was with Sone, she recently had a baby and started crying beside her. Gold felt trapped. “I needed to glance clear of the placement there.”
Sona got out of the stadium. He had to pass out, he says, even once he heard that Ericsson was awake as he was taken to the hospital. For Gold, shock, disbelief and fear were all mixed together, and although there was a chance the game could continue (it eventually happened), Gold knew this was no place to be happy.
In the days after that, like Ammundsen, he struggles with how to come to terms with seeing someone for whom he has such a dire state of mind. Denmark’s defensive midfielder Thomas Delaney has said that he and his teammates have taken great comfort in talking openly with each other about how they are feeling (“We are all suffering another way in our personal method”) ), but there is gold among those who have preferred to refrain from talking much about the situation.
“I’m seeking to keep up to date and rancid social media and the entirety,” he says. “I have not noticed the wall but.”
He sheds tears. “I could not write on it.”
A day earlier this week, a husband and wife approached Ammundsen in front of the wall. He had a picture in his hands and wanted to tape it. Ammundsen asked what it was, and he explained that his son-in-law was one of the physicians who arrived on the field to save Eriksson’s life.
This picture was of him going to work earlier that day, hours before the match started.
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“When he were given house that night time, his 6-year-old was once already asleep,” Irene Dahl explains. “The subsequent morning, when she aroused from sleep, he informed her, ‘Daddy, you are my hero.'”
Ammundsen took them to the wall and showed them the markers as they taped the picture. Pernil Hansen, a grade school teacher, was also taking some time to sign herself while some of her students were playing in the small football field nearby. Of course she had seen the game, but more than that she had come to school on Monday morning and heard her students, most of whom were 14 years old, talking to each other about what had happened. Some of them had come straight to the wall that day.
“It’s a large deal,” she says. “Some of the scholars had been a bit scared and it is important to discuss it. It’s vital for me to jot down this message. He’s a super, good football participant, however he is additionally a [partner] and a father. And we will be able to all relate to that, proper?”
Ammundsen standing nearby shook his head. Hansen went back to her children, but soon another man arrived. Then a group of teenage boys. Another group of students. On a business holiday.
Messages have already flowed around a corner from the original wall, and soon, Ammundsen says, he’ll have to take down some Heineken advertising panels to make up for even more space.
“We had been all inspired by way of what we noticed,” Ammundsen says. “It was once very emotional.”
He smiles. “We’ll get as many markers as we’d like.”
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