The Danish midfielder collapsed on the field during his side's opening match of the Euro 2020 campaign against Finland and was given lengthy medical treatment before regaining consciousness.

Denmark's team doctor says Eriksen's heart had stopped and that "he was gone" before being resuscitated with a defibrillator at the European Championship.

"And we did cardiac resuscitation. And it was cardiac arrest," said team doctor Morten Boesen, who led the work in giving Eriksen treatment on the field.

"How close were we? I don't know. We got him back after one defib. That's quite fast."

Stories came out thick and fast about how Denmark captain Simon Kjaer may very well have saved his teammate's life by starting CPR before the medical team was able to reach Eriksen.

Rather than focuse on the miraculous efforts to save Eriksen, I want to highlight how the issue was handled away from the pitch.

More specifically, I want to focus on the media's coverage on the incident as it happened live.

England's major broadcaster the BBC was showing the match, and in the minutes following Eriksen's collapse, continued to show vision from inside the stadium rather than panning to a wide shot or going back to the studio analysts. The broadcaster even went as far as to show a close-up of Eriksen's tearful wife.

One of the more resonating images from the whole event was that of the Danish team forming a circle (as pictured to the right) around their teammate as he lay on the ground, in an effort to block cameras being able to close in on Eriksen himself.

This, to no surprise, caused the BBC major backlash and rightfully so.

In a statement, the BBC said: "We apologise to anyone who was upset by the images broadcast.

"In-stadium coverage is controlled by UEFA as the host broadcaster, and as soon as the match was suspended, we took our coverage off air as quickly as possible."

True or not that they had no control over whether to take the vision off the screen, it is no doubt unacceptable.

The thought of broadcasting a man fighting for his life on international television surely can't sit right with anyone, especially considering how quickly broadcasters are to pull the pin on live television when a streaker - for example - rushes onto the field. If they can do it for one, they should be able to do it for all.

"We were put in a position, that I personally feel that we shouldn't have been put in," Kasper Schmeichel told Danish media at a press event in Helsingor north of Copenhagen.

This came as former Danish goalkeeper and father to Kasper, Peter Schmeichel, claimed players were threatened with a forfeit if they refused to continue on with the match.

"I actually saw an official quote from UEFA yesterday saying that they were following the advice of the player, the players insisted on playing - I know that not to be the truth," he told ITV's Good Morning Britain.

"Or, it's how you see the truth. They were left with three options, one was to play immediately and get the last 50 minutes played. The next one was to come in yesterday [Sunday] at 12 noon and finish the 50 minutes and the third option was to forfeit the game, 3-0."

UEFA has since denied the allegations.

But regardless of what the truth is, the whole incident has once more brought to light the ugly side of sport and the media. The media needs to be better at how we deal with situations that can and will have life-long impacts on the exact people we are reporting on.

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