Player watch: Christian Eriksen

An hour went by at San Siro and the visitors’ goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu had yet to make a single save. Inter Milan were 2-0 down against Torino and in dire need of some inspiration if they were to turn the game around.

Sat in the dugout, Christian Eriksen perhaps could have been forgiven for thinking Antonio Conte might beckon him over and tell him to get ready to come on.

Twenty-four hours earlier, his coach had highlighted the Dane’s talent for shooting as a reason why he wouldn’t be experimenting with him in the Pirlo role. It’s too deep, too far away from goal. “If you take his best attribute away from him and put him in front of the defence, you totally change his nature as a player,” Conte observed.

But desperate times call for desperate measures and Inter were losing at home to a team who were in the relegation zone and without coach Marco Giampaolo after a positive COVID-19 test not to mention star striker Andrea Belotti, who aggravated an injury in the warm-up. As Alexis Sanchez scrambled a goal back, Conte turned to his bench in search of an equaliser. He overlooked Eriksen and selected Lautaro Martinez and Milan Skriniar instead. That pair combined within seconds of coming on to slip Sanchez through and set Romelu Lukaku up for a tap-in. Torino’s lead was practically gone in 60 seconds.

More than 20 minutes remained on the clock. More than enough time to go on and win this thing. Conte surveyed his options and passed over Eriksen again. He threw on Ivan Perisic, then Radja Nainggolan and wrested a precious victory from the jaws of defeat. Lukaku put Inter in front from the penalty spot and crossed for Lautaro to make the win look a lot more comfortable than it was in stoppage time. The player who put the irrepressible Belgian in position to create a fourth unanswered goal was Perisic. Conte’s five subs were the right subs, no question.

As was the case on opening night in September when Inter also came back to win by scoring four against Fiorentina, Conte made effective use of the depth at his disposal to rescue a game that was getting away from his team. On that occasion, Eriksen was at least in the starting XI. At the time it was interpreted as a signal of Conte’s intent to establish him in the team once and for all as the new campaign got started. Seconds after falling 3-2 behind, the 28-year-old was hooked, along with Ashley Young, in the manager’s first substitutions of the night. Eriksen’s last involvement was to be used by Franck Ribery as a screen for arguably the assist of the season so far in Serie A. Since then, the former Tottenham Hotspur playmaker has started just twice in the league.

Only fresh-faced back-up striker Andrea Pinamonti, Stefano Sensi (who has been injured for almost a month) and the out-of-favour Nainggolan, who was self-isolating in October after testing positive for COVID-19, are clocking up less game-time for Inter in Serie A than Eriksen, and the club appear open to letting him go when the transfer window reopens. Eriksen has spoken about his predicament over recent international breaks back home in Denmark, where his peripheral role is the source of some consternation. His comments about not playing as much as he did at Spurs, not wishing to spend all autumn on the bench and not getting on even when the team could use him (as was the case this Sunday, in the defeat to Real Madrid three weeks ago and in the draws with Atalanta and Lazio) have not gone unnoticed among the Inter hierarchy.

Conte has at times become exasperated by the media’s fixation with Eriksen. But as this weekend’s edition of Corriere della Sera put it, the lithe midfielder from Middelfart is “the elephant in the room”. “It bothers me that you have to systematically talk about Eriksen and not the other guys who are on the bench or those who got 10 minutes at the end,” the former Chelsea coach prickled after Eriksen’s last start in Serie A a month ago.
eriksen spurs transfer window

The reason for the slight obsession with his No 24 is simple enough to understand.

Inter paid €20 million for Eriksen when only six months remained on his contract with Spurs. They also made him the club’s highest earner after Lukaku. He was unveiled at Milan’s world-famous opera theatre, La Scala, as a new virtuoso. The feeling, at the time, was Eriksen could be the player to swing the title race in Inter’s favour.

Who would have predicted that another January arrival from the Premier League, the veteran wing-back Young, would make a more immediate and sustained impact? Young has scored or assisted 11 goals since joining Inter. Eriksen has mustered seven, with four of them coming against Champions League also-rans Ludogorets and relegation-bound Brescia.

How then, do we explain his travails, particularly when he keeps going away on international duty and delivering for his country? Eriksen scored in all three of Denmark’s October games, including the only goal in their first win over England at Wembley since 1983. He followed that up with both goals in last week’s 2-1 win over Iceland.

Speaking after facing his Inter team-mate in a 4-2 Nations League win for Belgium last Wednesday, Lukaku was drawn on why Eriksen’s career hasn’t taken off in the same way as his own at Inter. He expressed the opinion that the language barrier is maybe holding Eriksen back. “Christian has all the qualities to become a top player and I want to help him,” the striker told Danish broadcaster Kanal 5. “But first he has to learn Italian. I immediately got used to a new reality, but maybe he will need more time. With the language, he still has some work to do. If he learned Italian, I am sure that everything would become easier for him.” It echoes an observation Conte made towards the end of last season. “He has to shake off the timidness he has. He has to let it go.”

In Eriksen’s defence, his integration has been severely disrupted. He hasn’t had a pre-season and regardless of adapting to a new style of football and a different culture, lockdown left him quite literally isolated. While it did furnish him with the time to learn the rudiments of a new language with a tutor, progress to fluency and the confidence you sometimes need to speak tends to be accelerated by the kind of daily dressing-room interactions he initially missed out on. All that being said, players such as Young were in a similar boat and haven’t allowed it to impact on performance. The squad isn’t exactly short of English speakers either. The manager is one and it doesn’t have to be a defining issue.

Of greater concern was the tactical fit. When Eriksen joined, there was no obvious role for him in Conte’s system. It’s one of the reasons why Dejan Kulusevski chose Juventus over Inter last winter. Since then, Conte has evolved his scheme and Inter now play with a No 10 but Eriksen still hasn’t made the position his own. Arturo Vidal was deployed there against Torino, but it’s the form of Nicolo Barella and his interpretation of it that makes it increasingly difficult to picture the Dane fulfilling the wishes of Inter supporters to have another player in the Wesley Sneijder mould operating in that area. Barella, a fan favourite, has been outstanding since the restart, showing the trademark dynamism that has long distinguished his game as well as a new and surprising aptitude for playing the right final ball.

It was Barella who replaced Eriksen against Genoa a month ago. Within seconds of coming on just before the hour, the Italy international succeeded where his team-mate had struggled, playing a reverse pass behind the Genoa defence for Lukaku to open the scoring. It set Inter on the road to victory. Eriksen has barely been seen since.

Right now, dropping Barella just isn’t an option. His volleyed back-heel assist for Lautaro in Madrid was unexpected and it’s the kind of moment supporters would maybe have looked to Eriksen or Sensi for in the recent past. One is on the fringes. The other is always injured.

Conte’s decision to play either Barella or Vidal behind his two strikers feels significant. The profile of player he wants there clearly must have plenty of energy and hustle. Barella and Vidal are pressers, tacklers, blade runners. They bring the heat. Eriksen does not and quite remarkably for someone who arrived from the Premier League, he has completed 90 minutes only twice since moving to Serie A.

After the Genoa game, Conte said: “We’re trying to help him improve from the point of view of his intensity. He’s putting his all into it.” Eriksen’s all is apparently not enough for Conte right now, though. It begs the question of why Inter signed him? Was it a reaction to Kulusevski choosing Juventus and the injuries Barella, Alexis, Sensi and Roberto Gagliardini sustained this time last year? A roll of the dice at a time when Inter had their best chance of winning the league since the treble?

The move makes little sense in hindsight and on Sunday, in reaction to Eriksen’s recent comments from Denmark, Inter chief executive Beppe Marotta said: “Conte gave a detailed answer to this question (about the player’s future in his pre-match press conference). I’d add that we won’t ever keep a player who asks to be transferred.”

The implication was clear. If Eriksen wishes to leave and play elsewhere, all he needs to do is inform the club.

Finding a taker for a player turning 29 in February on his salary (a four-and-a-half-year deal) won’t be easy, particularly when the upcoming market is forecast to be the slowest for years. Inter fielded interest from Borussia Dortmund and Hertha Berlin about taking him on loan towards the end of the last transfer window but, as with Perisic and Nainggolan, both of whom were returned to sender from loans at Bayern Munich and Cagliari, there was little point taking things further without the promise of a guaranteed fee or a player in exchange. Recently there have been reports of potential trades with Paris Saint-Germain and Spurs’ arch-rivals Arsenal and the speculation continues to mount.

“It reminds me of my situation in Bergamo (with Atalanta),” Eriksen’s compatriot, the AC Milan centre-back Simon Kjaer, told newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport. “There are times when the manager’s ideas and methods are really well suited to you and others when they’re not. I know he won’t give up.”

But as the one-year anniversary of Eriksen’s move approaches, both parties must concede the deal has yet to work out.