‘We feared the worst’: Finland’s Tim Sparv on seeing Eriksen collapse

Tim Sparv, the Finland captain and midfielder, was one of the team playing Denmark in Copenhagen on Saturday when Christian Eriksen collapsed in the 42nd minute. He tells The Guardian's Will Unwin what he saw, what happened next, and how the game restarted after a 108-minute delay.

BEFORE THE EVENT: Denmark's midfielder Christian Eriksen vies with Finland skipper Tim Sparv during Saturday's match at the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen. “There was a great deal of understanding and empathy from both sides," Sparv says. "We were not forced to do anything that we didn’t want to do."

“WE were all just thinking ‘what is going on?’, ‘was he tackled, is that the reason he went down?’. But then we could see he wasn’t moving, you could see the reaction on some of the players’ faces that were close to him, they were in shock, everyone was shouting to get the medical staff on the pitch as soon as possible and you realise this is something serious. Then I found out we did not have a player that tried to tackle him, he was just alone and fell down.

"You’ve seen these things happen before in football and you imagine the worst. We were in shock. We didn’t know what was going on and we were hoping he was going to come back as soon as possible.