When Christian Eriksen collapsed on the pitch during Euro 2020, the world held its breath. It wasn't just the sight of a fit young athlete falling without contact that stunned us. It was the race against time.
The doctors sprinted onto the grass. They performed CPR. They used a defibrillator.
And he lived. That defibrillator, that small box of wires and electricity cost about £2,000. It is a simple piece of kit.
But it saved his life. It worked because someone had invested in the training. Someone had ensured the device was there.
That is the story of public goods. We don't think about them until the moment they are needed. Then we realise their value.
But here is the rub. In this country, in the working-class towns of the North, in the schools and community centres, those defibrillators are often missing. The training is patchy.
The funding is cut. We celebrate Eriksen's survival as a miracle of modern medicine. But it was not a miracle.
It was a triumph of planning, of public spending, of a society that decided to be ready. When a footballer collapses, the world watches and we learn. But when a factory worker collapses on the shop floor, no one films it.
The defibrillator might not be there. The ambulance might take too long. The difference between life and death is not fate.
It is funding. Eriksen is alive because Denmark, his national team, had a defibrillator on the bench. They had trained medics.
They had a plan. The same cannot be said for every school in Rotherham or every sports centre in Sunderland. We look at Eriksen now, playing again with a device in his chest, and we marvel.
But we must ask: why should a footballer's life be worth more than a miner's? The answer is it shouldn't. The price of a defibrillator is the cost of a few luxury boxes.
The training is a small price compared to the grief of a lost loved one. This is not a story of technology's wonder. It is a story of priorities.
We invest in the visible, the glamorous, the easy. We neglect the invisible, the everyday, the dull. The machine that saved Eriksen is a reminder.
Public health is not a cost. It is a choice. And the choice should be simple.
Every community deserves a defibrillator. Every worker deserves the chance to live. That is the real lesson from the pitch.
