If you ask any football fan to pick the most shocking thing they witnessed over the last year, I am reasonably sure the vast, vast majority would not hesitate to say it was Christian Eriksen’s cardiac arrest at Euro 2020. Watching the Danish midfielder collapse during their game against Finland was a moment of horror, with millions around the world fearing the worst for the former Tottenham Hotspur midfielder.

And, let’s face it, the worst was very nearly the reality: Eriksen was technically dead for several minutes. It was only the incredible efforts of the medical teams at the game, who performed CPR on the player while his teammates held up sheets to cover up the scene, that brought him back from the brink.

But now, and I can’t quite believe I am writing this, Eriksen is looking to resume his playing career. As someone who was glued to the television during that fateful match, I am staggered that just seven months later, the player is ready to make his comeback.

Speaking during an interview last week, Eriksen described how he could remember every moment of the incident – other than the three to four minutes before he was resuscitated. He said, after regaining consciousness, he originally thought he had broken his back as he lay on the floor struggling to breathe. Later, after realising he had technically been dead for a while, he told his fiancée he wouldn’t be playing again.

But, as they say, that was then, and this is now. And now he is ready to get back on the horse.

After being fitted with a tiny defibrillator (ICD) in the aftermath of the incident, Eriksen has been training on his own back in Denmark. That is primarily because his contract with Inter was terminated last December, because players who have been fitted with an ICD cannot play in the Italian league. But those restrictions don’t apply in other competitions, including the Premier League, where Eriksen spent seven, mostly excellent, years with Spurs.

One of the Dane’s primary aims in returning to football is to get himself match fit and up-to-speed during 2022 so he can play for his country at the World Cup in Qatar in November. That would complete an incredible comeback for a player who most people believed would never kick a ball in anger again.

Of course, that ambition depends on whether Eriksen can find a club that is ready to take a gamble on a player who had such a horrendous health scare. There is no doubting the lad’s talent – he has been one of the most cultured midfielders in Europe for the best part of a decade – and, at 30, he is certainly not past his best.

But any club that takes the plunge will need to be absolutely 100 per cent convinced that the same thing isn’t going to happen again. They will need to be assured by expert cardiologists that Eriksen is fit to be put under the pressures of top-level football. If those assurances are made beyond any reasonable doubt, then I actually think there will be plenty of clubs willing to offer Eriksen a route back into the big time. Maybe even Spurs, which would be a bit of a fairy-tale ending to this story.

Any club that takes the plunge will need to be assured that Eriksen is fit to be put under the pressures of top-level football

The simple fact is that if he is healthy, he does have an awful lot to offer a team on the pitch. But more than that, many others in his position, whose financial future is already secured, would have said enough is enough and hung up their boots for good.

That he is showing such astonishing levels of determination to play again shows how much he loves his football, and his commitment to the game. And those characteristics are probably just as valuable as his talent to whichever club signs him up.

I’m looking forward to seeing him grace the pitch once again – and those are words I never thought I would say as I sat staring at the TV, open-mouthed and horrified, last summer.

Cheap at twice the price

I’m not going to pretend I am an expert on the valuation of football clubs, but it feels like last week’s takeover of Southampton was one heck of a deal.

A price of £100 million for an 80 per cent stake in a Premier League club, to my uneducated mind at least, sounds like an absolute bargain. Maybe not to you or I but in the world of top-level football, that’s a special-offer-everything-must-go price.

Just the tiniest bit of research shows that Southampton earn more than that every year from broadcast fees alone. Then you have the ground which is a substantial asset, and the players who must be collectively worth £200 million.

It has been suggested that previous owner, Gao Jisheng, desperately wanted out and that may be why he sold his controlling interest to Sport Republic for less than half of what he paid for it in 2017.

And, of course, we are not privy to what sort of debts Southampton have which Sport Republic – backed by Serbian media mogul Dragan Solak – have probably had to take on. But still, after Newcastle United went for three times that price earlier this year, I think Solak and his pals have got themselves a bargain.

Hopefully for Saints’ fans, this can be the start of a new era for a club which has an amazing propensity to produce talent but never seems capable of holding onto it for long enough to build a team capable of challenging at the top of the league.

Cup half empty?

The third round of the FA Cup used to be a magical affair. It was the time when, as a fan of a lower league club, you looked forward to the possibility of a tie against a big boy. For those non-league sides and minnows who had made it that far, it was a time to dream of giant killings and ‘cupsets’.

Sadly, the big boys no longer treat the FA Cup with the respect it deserves and that makes the whole darned thing so much less special.

Yes, there will be some shock results here and there, and maybe even the killing of a giant.

But somehow, it just isn’t the same as it used to be.

E-mail: james@quizando.com

Twitter: @maltablade