Last December, former professional soccer player Danny Blind received a call from his son Daley that made him very happy.

Daley, who like his father became famous as a star at Ajax Amsterdam and in the Dutch national team, said in an interview that for the first time in months he had "not thought of his heart" for a whole game.

The now 59-year-old former professional told of this relieving moment in a TV interview the other day. Nobody could have known at the time that athletes' hearts would become a defining theme in this first phase of the European Championship. Blind had no idea that the millions of TV viewers who sympathized last Saturday while Christian Eriksen was about to die on the lawn of the Copenhagen National Stadium would suddenly understand quite well what the blinds were talking about.

Suddenly the fears, medical questions and worries that are part of everyday life for the famous footballer family are topics at dinner tables across Europe. Blind junior, whose team can advance to the second round of the European Championship early on this Thursday (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship, on ZDF and on MagentaTV) with a victory over Austria, a so-called cardioverter defibrillator ( ICD) implanted in the chest.

So that he doesn't suffer the same fate as Eriksen. "Apart from the fact that I know Christian well as a friend and the situation is terrible for him, I've also seen a lot in this context," the 31-year-old defender reported at the European Championship. From 2010 to 2013 he played with Eriksen at Ajax, and they kept in touch later on. Now they have a new - in this case very sad - thing in common, even if Blind's medical history was not quite as threatening as the case of Eriksen, who, as his doctors announced on Thursday, will now also be given such a defibrillator.

That something is wrong with his cardiovascular system, Blind noticed during a Champions League game with Ajax Amsterdam at Valencia CF in December 2019. He let himself be replaced with dizziness.

Further examinations revealed that the professional had an inflammation of the heart muscle.

He was then fitted with the defibrillator, a device designed to save lives and alleviate fears of collapse.

As soon as the heart rate increases so much that there must be ventricular fibrillation, the ICD sends one or more electric pulses to correct the arrhythmia.

But the fear of heart failure is not that easy to get rid of.

The time of fear-free games is over

When Blind was replaced after an hour in Holland's 3-2 win, he sank into the arms of his coach Frank de Boer and cried. The events around Eriksen the day before, which he experienced with fellow players in front of the TV, had "a great influence" on him, says Blind. After the shock, he had to wrestle for a long time and "overcome a mental hurdle" to play at all. A long phone call with the father also helped with the decision-making process, and Blind has not regretted it.

The Netherlands not only got off to a successful start in the tournament, their 3-2 win against Ukraine also had an entertainment value that met the high stylistic demands of the Dutch. While the evening was a kind of liberation for Blind personally, the defender says: “I'm proud that I made it. The emotion is finally coming out. ”But life with a heart that threatens to fail at any time remains complicated.

The time of fear-free games is probably over for Blind after Eriksen's collapse.

"Of course you're scared, but we never panicked, we trust the doctors," says father Danny.

Nevertheless, an inflammation of the heart muscle, like the one Blind had, makes the organ more difficult to predict.

It was not until last August that the defibrillator suddenly sent electric shocks in a test match against Hertha BSC.

Blind was very conscious of all of this, he sank to the floor, allowed himself to be treated.

"It was banned five or six years ago"

Apparently, the implant's sensors had measured faulty heartbeats.

“The ICD went off and immediately afterwards he was fine.

We will do some tests and wait for the results and then make decisions, ”said his club coach Erik ten Hag afterwards.

Then four months passed before Daley's phone call with the father, in which he reported a whole game without fear of new heart failure.

Now everything is present again.

The fact that blind can play again at all is a small miracle of modern medicine.

"For a long time - up until five or six years ago - it was absolutely forbidden to do competitive sports with such shock generators," says Christine Joisten, head of the Institute for Movement and Neuroscience at the Sports University in Cologne, to Deutschlandfunk.

This is because the devices must be programmed so that they can differentiate between dangerous ventricular fibrillation and an increased pulse due to excitement and exertion, which is evidently a challenge.