Christian Eriksen: Denmark’s modest boy from Middelfart who learned the art of selfishness to star at the World Cup

On Tuesday Denmark take on France aiming to make it to the second round for only the second time in Eriksen’s lifetime, and looking to their talismanic playmaker to secure their passage

In 1359, a group of rebellious Danish knights, returning home after an acrimonious meeting with King Valdemar IV, were murdered by some local fishermen as they tried to find a boat to transport them to Jutland. And that, to all intents and purposes, is the last event of real note to have occurred in Middelfart, a town of about 15,000 people, on the western tip of the Danish island of Funen.

The iron foundry was closed in the 1970s. The whale blubber industry began to taper off at the start of the 20th century. And ever since, Middelfart seems to have accepted its fate: a small town in the centre of a small country, the sort of place you go in search of the quiet life. “It’s not bad, not good, it’s in the middle,” says Kim Frank Petersen, a teacher at the local secondary school. “Geographically, it lies in the centre of Denmark. Politically, it’s in the middle. It’s a very middle town.”

Until recently, that is. These days, there is one name on the lips of the locals who pour onto the town’s football pitches by night in the hope of emulating their most famous son. Petersen was his PE teacher for three years. And no matter how many journalists and well-wishers track him down, he never gets tired of telling the story of how Christian Eriksen made it from the unassuming streets of Middelfart to the world’s very biggest stage.

On Tuesday, Eriksen’s Danish team take on France, aiming to make it to the second round for only the second time in Eriksen’s lifetime. And in a tournament where even the more celebrated sides are in thrall to a single outstanding talent, Denmark’s reliance on Eriksen stands out. It was his defining display in the play-off against Ireland that secured Denmark’s passage to Russia; now, a proud nation is looking to its talismanic playmaker to secure its passage to round two.

Yet for much of his career, Eriksen has been a reluctant hero, as one might expect to emerge from a sleepy commuter town on the outskirts of nowhere. “In Danish, we say ‘ydmyg’,” says Petersen, who coached him in the school team for three years. “It means ‘humble’. I remember him as a very nice guy, a very little guy, but with good feet. He knew that he was good. But he didn’t have to tell anyone.”

In many ways, that modest nature, the unfussy style with which he gathers and distributes the ball, has been Eriksen’s trademark over the years. But leading a country into a World Cup finals has demanded a different sort of talent, one that has not always come naturally. Frank de Boer, a columnist for The Independent, and Eriksen’s manager at Ajax, remembers how he had to coach Eriksen in the art of selfishness.

“What you miss,” De Boer recalls telling Eriksen, “is the ego to score goals. You always want to give the pass, if there is a rebound from the goalkeeper, or if you see somebody else gives the ball to the striker, you have to support. That, for an offensive midfielder, is important.” In his first six years of international football, Eriksen scored five goals. In the two years since, he has scored 17.

Fans of Tottenham and regular watchers of the Premier League will be well familiar with Eriksen’s qualities. But fewer will be aware of the upbringing that produced them. And when you speak to his early mentors, what comes through is the unusual maturity that Eriksen displayed, even from the earliest days. “He looked at football differently from others at his age,” Petersen says. “And when he played, you could see he was confident on the field. But in class, he was a normal guy. He would play with the girls, with those who weren’t good at football. He was a popular guy.”

And so the killer instinct that would turn him into one of Europe’s most feared playmakers: that would have to come from somewhere else: his father. Thomas Eriksen was a promising left-winger in his youth, until his career was cut short by injuries. And in the subsequent years, it’s tempting to speculate that he invested all his own aspirations in the son he hoped would one day fulfil his destiny.

The Spurs man is vitally important to club and country (Getty)

Thomas was a hard taskmaster. Even when Christian played well, he would be chastised. “There were some days that were miserable,” Eriksen would later tell a Danish magazine. “As we sat in the car on our way home from the game, my dad would tell me about some situation in the match. ‘What the hell were you doing there? Why didn’t you do this?’ You sit there, a little boy in the backseat, sinking further down into the seat. I wanted him to shut up. But I just wanted to play football, and I wouldn’t stop because of that.”

How strict was Thomas? Accounts differ. “I’ve heard the same as you,” says Petersen. “But it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as if Christian was crying. But his father could see what he was able to do with a ball, and helped him. He was a very good footballer – I’m only five years older than him, and we played on the same team – but he didn’t reach the level of Christian.”

It wasn’t long before Europe’s scouts were descending on Middelfart in hot pursuit. Chelsea invited him for two trials at Cobham at the age of 14 and 15, but immediately Eriksen felt uneasy. “You see how closed it is behind doors,” he later remembered. “Where I came from, everything was open, everyone could go into the training ground. Here you came in through two gates, 24-hour security. That was the first thing that made me pull back a little bit. I was just a quiet kid from Middelfart.”

And so Eriksen trod a well-worn path for promising young Danish footballers, across the North Sea to Amsterdam and Ajax. There, De Boer first clapped eyes on a midfielder with not only rare touch and vision, but a maturity and work ethic that few of his peers possessed. “The very good players, you don’t have to manage, because they know what their next step is gonna be,” De Boer says. “Of course I talked with him, but not that often. Because I didn’t have to push him to go and do extra things, free kicks, or to be in the gym. He was always there.”

So with the desire already in place, De Boer got to work on the ego. Having made his debut at 18, Eriksen was already establishing himself as one of the rising stars of an Ajax side that also contained future Premier League stars Jan Vertonghen, Toby Alderweireld and Daley Blind. De Boer takes up the story: “I said, All right, now you’ve played 20 games in the first team, all right, what’s the next step? You have to score more goals. You have to get more assists. How are you going to try to get there?’”

Ironically, given where he would end up, De Boer offered up the example of Rafael van der Vaart and Peter Crouch at Tottenham. “Van der Vaart plays a little bit in the same position at Spurs,” De Boer explained. “But when the ball goes to Crouch, he doesn’t look at Van der Vaart. He’s already on his way to support Crouch. And he scored a lot of goals from Crouch getting the ball and laying it back, or at the far post. That, he had to get in his mind.”

Christian Eriksen has starred for Denmark in Russia (Reuters)

But it was not until joining Tottenham in the summer of 2013 that Eriksen truly ascended to the next level. Eriksen joined Tottenham as a No8, at the tip of a midfield three in a 4-3-3, but over time moved further up the pitch, into the freer role in which he now excels. “I already knew him from his time at Ajax,” Spurs goalkeeper Hugo Lloris said to Kicker magazine earlier this month. “I saw a typical No10 in him when he joined Spurs. But this position has all but disappeared in modern football these days.

“You play with central attackers and wingers. But look at how Christian plays. He often starts out wide, then moves into the centre and keeps changing between those positions. He gets better and better with every year. And from my point of view, he can play everywhere and at any club. With his idea of football, how he reads the game and dictates its pace, he’s a top player.”

This is the role Eriksen as taken on for Denmark: not so much a part of the system, but the system itself, an attacker without portfolio, given licence to gather the ball wherever it is and chase it down wherever it might be. His spectacular goal against Australia on Thursday was a prime example: anticipating the move, working himself into position on the edge of the box, and executing a fine left-footed finish from 20 yards.

In a sense, Eriksen is a very modern attacking midfielder, distinguishing himself not just with his quality on the ball but his labour off it. “His work ethic is fantastic,” De Boer says. “You saw already, at Ajax, that he would sometimes run 14km in a game. But I can also still run 14km. If you do it at one speed, anybody can do that. But he does it at the highest speed. So for about 2km, he is running at 20km an hour. That’s why he’s so difficult to catch. He’s always on his way, and also at highest speed. And when he doesn’t play well, the work ethic is always there. He brings speed to the game.”

For Denmark, a country not overly blessed with technical talents, balancing the needs of the team with the need to get the best out of Eriksen has not always been an easy task. He endured a turbulent relationship with previous Danish coach Morten Olsen, who frequently singled him out for criticism. It was Olsen’s way of forcing Eriksen to take more responsibility, to seize the lapels of a team that needed him to function at his best. “You must control the game,” Olsen told him. “It’s not development any more. You’re not at Ajax.”

At the age of 26, and with qualification for the second round of the World Cup in his hands, it’s fair to say the message has got through. Eriksen became a father just before the start of the tournament, a happy development that has coincided with his maturation as a player. Even so, he has never forgotten his Middelfart roots. “He was here a few weeks ago,” Petersen says. “Every year they have a youth tournament on the Cruyff Court that’s named after him, and he’s been here for the last two years. He can’t publicise when he is coming, because the papers will all be there. But he played with the handicapped boys and girls, and it’s a very nice thing that he does.”

The story of Eriksen, then, is one of a quiet kid from a quiet town who – reluctantly at first – has borne the burden of a nation. At Spurs, he has the likes of Harry Kane and Dele Alli to help him out. Here, he’s pretty much on his own. “We have the prime minister, the Queen, and Caroline Wozniacki,” says Petersen. “But Christian is pretty near.” Get Denmark to round two, and they may well have to give that a rethink.