In 2012 Roma wanted to sign Christian Eriksen but, with two years left on his contract at Ajax, the deal was too expensive for a player who would not go straight into the first team and so the following year he joined Tottenham Hotspur for a reduced price.There was nothing unusual in that, all the top teams had looked at Eriksen, but what was remarkable is precisely why Roma wanted him. They had identified him as the natural successor to their greatest ever player: Francesco Totti. It showed just how highly he was rated and the potential he has. Totti was also one of Eriksen’s football heroes.
Now that potential is being fulfilled – spectacularly – and Eriksen is being talked about in the most accomplished of current company.“Of course [Kevin] De Bruyne is amazing and I love [David] Silva but Eriksen is the same, the same,” says Martin Jol, the man who gave the Dane his debut at Ajax, aged just 17, and who also has strong links to Spurs, who he also managed.
But Jol is not the only one who makes the connection between Eriksen and Manchester City’s two star midfield playmakers. Mauricio Pochettino also brackets them together.“For me, you can compare him with special players like De Bruyne or David Silva,” the Spurs manager says. “This type of player who is capable to play football, and run, and fight. That is a massive, massive value to have a player like Christian on the team.”
Jol goes even further. “If I was at another club, even at Barcelona, even at Real Madrid – you know [Andres] Iniesta? Eriksen will score more goals than Iniesta,” the Dutchman says. “Five years ago I think Iniesta was the best player in the world and Eriksen is probably as good or better because to play for Barcelona is probably easier than to play at Tottenham where they develop all these youngsters. “Maybe I am exaggerating a bit. But I think that, of course, he’s already a £100 million player – like De Bruyne. And If I was the manager of one of the biggest clubs, like Bayern Munich, I would try and sign him. But, for me, I hope he stays at Spurs because I think there is more to come and every time you see him, it’s a joy to watch him.”
He sees what others don’t
The lack of attention can be present even in the framing of some of his work, as with the first assist he produced in the 2017-18 season. Harry Kane is positioned as close as possible to the centre of the frame, as if the camera operator’s eyes are instantly drawn towards him and what he will do. Understandably so, given the seven goals he scored in the final two games of the previous season, but it’s almost presented as Kane’s stage with a supporting cast around him. Even if you recognise Eriksen as the recipient of his team-mate’s pass, you’re still watching Kane’s run in anticipation of him receiving a return ball in the box and, unless you’re a Spurs fan who’s seen this kind of thing before, the person playing the ball is secondary.
The scouting reports on Eriksen were unanimous. One scout told The Daily Telegraph: “Technically he was excellent. He saw passes between the lines and that is not common and he had this remarkable right-foot. Quite incredible. He was also a very modern player in the sense that he was technically gifted and dynamic. But there was also a lot of room for improvement and that was exciting. “For a player like him to be in possession is quite easy. The game comes easy. What needed to follow was how he operated out of possession and how he developed physically.”
It is a theme that Pochettino picks up on. “I think in the four seasons that he’s been playing for us, he has improved in every season,” he explains. “More mature, more experienced. He was so young when I arrived here. Of course now he’s a more mature player. That is one of the things that is easy to recognise and to give him the credit.” Eriksen could have been at Barcelona already, having had trials there as well as with AC Milan and Chelsea before he was advised by Jol’s friend and Chelsea’s former sporting director Frank Arnesen to join the fellow Dane’s former club, Ajax, aged just 16.
“He is an unbelievable talent,” Jol states when asked what his first recollections of Eriksen were. “There are a few talents you work with but he is a born footballer. Like [Wesley] Sneijder, [Rafael] Van der Vaart, Silva. These No 10 players who are born players. He was a born player. Everybody saw that so I thought it’s probably better to give him his debut. “The thing with him is he was dedicated. When he was 17 he was almost the same as he is now, an old-fashioned play-maker, although there is one big difference in the way he has developed himself into an overall midfield player. He goes for the ball, then he’s on the right, then he’s on the left. He’s feeding Harry Kane and Harry Kane knows that. If Christian does not play, Spurs have a problem. There are so many passes, so many assists for [Dele] Alli and for Kane.
Then, suddenly, another body emerges from the periphery and the ball is in the net before you can even process who it was. Eriksen hasn’t been looking for Kane at all, but rather – with all eyes drawn to the England man – he’s looked where no one else is looking and picked out Dele Alli. It’s a fantastic run, but one which would go ignored without the accompanying quality of pass. For Eriksen to measure it after just one quick glance is astonishing, given the precision needed to first clear the scrum in the middle and then bisect two Newcastle defenders, all while ensuring the extra juice keeps it near enough to Dele and far enough from Rob Elliot. It’s football’s equivalent of chipping in for an eagle, if the hole was placed on the lip of a bunker.
The figure of £100million is probably no exaggeration. Scouts around Europe are comparing Eriksen’s value to that of Philippe Coutinho, for whom Barcelona paid £142 million in January. With two years left on his contract Spurs may have a fight to keep Eriksen, especially if he excels with Denmark at this summer’s World Cup.Ahead of the FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United at Wembley there are recurrent themes when it comes to discussing Eriksen. The 26-year-old has a prodigious appetite for work and self-improvement. Even as a teenager at Ajax he employed a personal trainer to work with him two days a week with the specific aim of making him the fittest player at the club.
At Spurs, who he joined for £11.5 million, he has been a willing pupil under Pochettino and at the training ground staff speak of his desire to listen and learn and harness his extraordinary talent with a tough mentality to succeed. He has also bought in to Pochettino’s demands for hard work and a disciplined approach – in and, crucially, out of possession. Adding consistency and reliability to his talent, something he realised he had to do after that first season with Pochettino, was the game-changer. Until then he was told he was too “intermittent”.
He scores goals, too
He has tried to do plenty to combat that, however, and it’s not limited to assists and dead-ball plays. Hell, he even made a Denmark v Ireland fixture fun, with the sort of goal which must take hours of practice and yet looks effortless. If anyone else scored Eriksen’s first in Dublin, you might be tempted to zone in on their eyes to identify the deep focus – that is if they matched the execution, rather than composing themselves before beating Darren Randolph.
Instead, Eriksen finishes the chance like a man who knows an extra touch would benefit Ireland more than it would him, marrying that innate knowledge with a trust in his own finishing ability to the point where he hits an open-play strike more cleanly and accurately than most would convert a set-piece. Even Randolph’s attempt at a save feels like a raised middle finger of a dive, cursing Eriksen’s ability to find the one part of the goal he was never reaching and throwing in a bounce in off the crossbar for good measure.
“He is probably one of the few real playmakers in Europe now. In the concept of Pochettino he plays on the left, sometimes on the right, but he drifts in and you will see that again on Saturday in the semi-final and nobody has got an answer to that.” Pochettino refers to Eriksen as “Golazo”, a Spanish term that translates as “screamer” as in a screaming goal. Eriksen scores them in training, often from free-kicks, and Jol says that more goals is the only thing the player lacks. “It is almost unimaginable that he can play better,” he says. “Maybe he could score 15-20 goals, he’s got 10 so far this season, because he’s got a very good shot. And the thing with him is he’s right and left-footed. “He does not hesitate. He’s one of the most influential players in Europe at this moment.”
While brilliance can be immortalised by success during an illustrious career, retrospectives don’t require the same, Eriksen may go on to achieve plenty more, either in North London or elsewhere, but either way there will eventually come a time when his brilliance in a white shirt – and the red of Denmark – won’t be minimised by the surroundings in which it took