Eriksen enriched by experience in central role at Tottenham Hotspur

He had a better second season than has Ozil. He has nine goals from 23 Premier League games, and his pair at Sheffield United ensured Spurs’s progress to next month’s League Cup final.

Christian Eriksen, left, has impressed at Tottenham with his direct free-kicks and precision with the dead ball. Stu Forster / Getty Images

A level of patience is required to appreciate the value of Christian Eriksen to Tottenham Hotspur.

Rush for the exit to avoid the post-match traffic, and you are quite likely to miss his best work.

Lately, his match-winning goals have an eerie habit of arriving close to the final whistle. Four times this season, he has scored in the 88th minute or later. The Dane has stamina as well as an abundance of skill.

It is 18 months since Spurs spent heavily on six new recruits, taking advantage of the income from selling Gareth Bale to Real Madrid – a sum of more than £80 million (Dh448.1m). Eriksen towers above the rest of the newcomers as a success.

He had further to develop than others. Eriksen, unlike Erik Lamela, the winger signed from Roma, or Roberto Soldado, the striker hired from Valencia, did not come to the Premier League from of one Europe’s elite domestic competitions.

The step up from the Dutch Eredivise, where he had played with Ajax, was likely to be demanding, in terms of his time on the ball, in terms of physical rigour.

But he knew that, and planned for it. Patience is a virtue he seems to have cultivated since his teens.

“He was the star of Ajax but he has been clever,” says Jesper Gronkjaer, his Danish compatriot and a player who also represented Ajax and had a stint in the Premier League, notably with Chelsea. “He was clever because he kept saying ‘I’m going to wait before I move, I need more experience’.”

He was 21 when he joined Spurs. He had been a prodigy, admired across Europe’s elite clubs long before then.

He became the youngest footballer to appear at the 2010 World Cup, an 18-year-old given responsibility for supplying the creative spark for the Denmark national team.

Many Danes have long wanted to see, in Ericksen, a new Michael Laudrup, an attacking midfielder who could inspire a generation, as Laudrup did in the 1980s.

Eriksen, inevitably, looked up to Laudrup, who represented Denmark until the late 1990s, as a child and would study his movements around opposing penalty boxes as he developed his game.

Another idol for him as a schoolboy was Roma’s Francesco Totti, a No 10 who has adapted his game intelligently through two decades.

Like Totti, Eriksen is master of the unexpected, telling pass. But it is his goals that have given Tottenham their momentum lately, and helped define tomorrow’s North London derby as potentially decisive for a top-four finishing spot and a 2015/16 Champions League ticket. In a fixture layered with intrigue, Eriksen versus Mesut Ozil, the German playmaker who joined Arsenal in the same summer as the Dane joined Spurs, is a captivating joust.

So far, Eriksen has certainly had a better second season than has Ozil, recently recovered from injury. He has nine goals from 23 Premier League games, and his pair at Sheffield United last week ensured Spurs’s progress to next month’s League Cup final.

His direct free-kicks have become an especially potent weapon, and his precision with a dead ball is the topic of wide-eyed admiration in Tottenham practice sessions.

Word is that, set the challenge of hitting the crossbar, he can do so 10 times in succession. “He’s a key player and a big talent,” says Mauricio Pochettino, the Tottenham coach.

The third manager to take charge of Spurs since Eriksen arrived under the watch of Andre Villas-Boas, Pochettino has eased Eriksen more regularly into a central role, though with some freedom to drift. At the beginning of his Tottenham career, he sometimes appeared marginalised when assigned to wide positions.

His productivity has soared. “He shows he can score and give assists,” said Jan Vertonghen, the Spurs defender who coincided with a young Eriksen at Ajax. “Near the end of his Ajax days, they used to say his stats weren’t as good as they should be. But he is improving every season. He can become one of the best playmakers in the Premier League.”

Vertonghen, who advised Eriksen to choose Tottenham ahead of suitors in Germany and Italy, testifies to the Dane’s hard work in practice.

Gronkjaer, who played alongside him for the national team, talks of his maturity and professionalism, of a level-headedness despite the great expectations that rose around him so early in his life: “He’s a clever guy. You won’t see him get into trouble. He loves his football.”

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