Following his collapse at Euro 2020, Eriksen’s Inter Milan contract was cancelled by mutual consent because players fitted with an ICD cannot compete in Serie A.
The Premier League and Bundesliga do not have the same regulations.
An ICD is a device about half the size of a mobile phone with thin wires leading to the area around the heart.
There are two main types of ICD.
One is fitted under the skin, usually near the armpit, and acts like a mini defibrillator.
“We call it a shock box,” says Dr Michael Papadakis, a reader in cardiology at St George’s, University of London, told the BBC in 2022. “It looks after your [heart] rhythm and, if it detects a very fast, life-threatening irregularity, it will shock you out of it and jump-start the heart.”
The other main type of ICD is usually fitted in the space just below the collarbone and, like a pacemaker, can also send a regular electrical signal if it detects the heart is beating too slowly.
Eriksen’s first collapse came nine years after Fabrice Muamba’s near-fatal injury at Tottenham and 19 years after Marc-Vivien Foe tragically lost his life in Lyon.
Luton Town’s Premier League match at Bournemouth was abandoned after their captain Tom Lockyer collapsed on the pitch in 2023.
Former Bolton midfielder Muamba retired aged 24 on the advice of his doctors, but others have continued to play with an ICD – including former Manchester United midfielder Daley Blind, who returned to play for Ajax and the Netherlands after being diagnosed with a heart condition in 2019.
Two years on from suffering his cardiac arrest, Lockyer returned to football with Bristol Rovers.
