Christian Eriksen told partner he wouldn't play again after "realising I had been dead"

Christian Eriksen is on the verge of returning to competitive football action for the first time since collapsing at Euro 2020, but there was a point at which the Dane thought he would never play again.

The former Tottenham midfielder revealed he had "died for five minutes" during Denmark's group game against Finland, with medics saving his life after he suffered a cardiac arrest during the game.

Eriksen returned to training in December after being fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), but left former club Inter Milan due to Italian regulations preventing him from playing with the device.

The 29-year-old joined Brentford in January, and will aim to make a Premier League impact with the London side just months after telling his partner he was adamant his playing days were over.

Eriksen has taken things slowly since the cardiac arrest, and has revealed his girlfriend Sabrina Kvist Jensen had a big part to play after he initially told her there was "no way" he could see himself returning to the pitch.

“If Sabrina had said, ‘I don’t want you to play any more,’ this would be a very different situation," the midfielder said, as reported by The Sun.

“Of course, we have a trauma from June 12, but since then we have found our bearings so that Sabrina is OK with me going to the gym for a few hours and to the practice field.

“She trusts that when I go, I always come back.”

Speaking about the incident last month on Danish TV station DR1, Eriksen said: "I felt a small cramp in my calf and then I blacked out.

“When I woke up from the CPR it was like waking from a dream.I don’t remember a thing from when I passed out. I’m on my back when I wake up. I feel them pressing on me. I struggled to breathe — and then I