Euro 2020: Wales To Be Ruthless Against Neutrals’ Favourites Denmark
Wales were loved at Euro 2016, underdogs winning new admirers, as they exceeded all expectations on a joyous ride to the semi-finals.
They charmed the tournament to such an extent that even the Red Wall, their many thousand supporters who joined them on the journey, were given an award by their French hosts.
On Saturday, Wales are back for more in the knockout stages of a European Championship but, perhaps for the first time in their brief experience of playing at major tournaments, they will not be the neutrals’ choice.
That tag belongs to their second-round opponents, Denmark, whose progress to the last 16 has been the uplifting story of Euro 2020.
It is a tale forged in trauma, their opening game against Finland plunged into darkness when midfielder Christian Eriksen collapsed on the pitch after suffering a cardiac arrest. The home crowd in Copenhagen was stunned into silence by an incident which shook the football world.
Denmark’s players were visibly distraught. When Eriksen was taken to hospital and it became apparent he was recovering, some of his teammates were overwhelmed when the game restarted and unable to continue.
Losing to Finland felt irrelevant after such an incident but, once Eriksen was well enough to speak to his colleagues from the hospital and urge them on, the team became imbued with an unbreakable determination to succeed.
“What you can get after a shared sense of trauma is something called ‘trauma bonding’. That is when a team will become even closer because of that shared experience,” says Dr Gillian Cook, a lecturer in sports psychology at Liverpool John Moores University and sports psychologist for Dundee United.
“What you find from this sort of event is that people’s values and sense of purpose can very much change. They can go out there with a renewed mission and sense of purpose.
“Christian Eriksen said that the players should absolutely do it for Denmark so I think there will be a lot of will, a lot of effort for that mission to do it for him and do it for Denmark.”
