Eriksen and Hakimi: Tottenham's No. 10 and PSG's flying full-back

The playmaker and the sprinter

Few pairings seem less natural on paper. Eriksen arrived at Inter in January 2020 as the creative heartbeat Tottenham had built around for seven years, a Dutch-schooled, Danish number 10 who had reached a Champions League final with Spurs in 2019 and left Ajax as a three-time Eredivisie champion. Hakimi arrived that same summer from Borussia Dortmund, a Real Madrid academy product who had set Bundesliga sprint records and was already being talked about as one of the best young right-backs in Europe.

One was a free-kick specialist who drifted into pockets of space; the other was a wing-back clocked at over 36 km/h, bombing the width of the pitch. Different jobs, different rhythms, different reputations, but for one Serie A campaign, both were doing them in Nerazzurri blue.

A title, then two very different exits

That 2020–21 season ended with the Scudetto, Inter's first league title in over a decade, and both men played their part. Hakimi settled quickly, scoring on his first Serie A start and becoming a fixture at right wing-back under Antonio Conte. Eriksen, by contrast, never quite found his best form in Italy, a player built for the Premier League's tempo adapting to a different kind of football.

Their paths then split dramatically. Hakimi left for PSG that same summer in a deal reportedly worth around €68 million, beginning a run that would bring five Ligue 1 titles, two Coupes de France, and, eventually, back-to-back Champions League triumphs in 2025 and 2026, making him the most decorated African footballer in history.

Eriksen's story took a far harder turn. In June 2021, he suffered a cardiac arrest on the pitch during a Euro 2020 match for Denmark. The device fitted to manage his heart rhythm made him ineligible to continue under Serie A rules, and his Inter contract was terminated. What followed was one of football's more remarkable comebacks: a move to Brentford, then Manchester United, where he won an FA Cup and EFL Cup, before later experiences that underline just how serious his health scare always was.

Why the pairing still surprises

Neither man is remembered, first and foremost, as an Inter player. Eriksen's identity is bound up with Tottenham, the club where he was twice Player of the Season and reached a Champions League final. Hakimi's is bound up with PSG, where he has become a Champions League winner and one of the most decorated players Africa has produced. Inter was a staging post for both: a short, trophy-laden interlude sandwiched between the clubs that actually define how each man is remembered.

That's precisely what makes the overlap worth pausing on. A Danish playmaker rebuilding his career after one of football's most frightening on-field moments, and a Moroccan full-back on his way to becoming a continental great, briefly stood on the same patch of grass, chasing the same title, for the same club neither is really associated with at all.