Mikel Merino Reflects on Spain's World Cup Opener
Mikel Merino walked into the press room alone, the only Spain player not out on the training pitch on a sticky Tennessee morning, and called it what it felt like.
“Mourning,” he said. With a “u”.
“No one died, it’s not a mourning exactly, but at times defeats can feel like that,” the Arsenal midfielder admitted. Only this wasn’t even a defeat. It was a 0-0 draw against Cape Verde in Spain’s World Cup opener – a result that landed with the weight of something far heavier.
Six long days now separate that flat night in Atlanta from their chance to put it right. Six days to live with the noise, to replay the chances, to stare down the doubts. Six days of what Merino calls mourning.
A Spanish inquisition in Tennessee
Spain’s squad returned to their base in Tennessee to find the questions waiting for them. Seven desks of reporters lined up in front of Merino, cameras rolling, microphones pushed forward. Outside, the criticism had already started. Inside, the midfielder chose not to dodge it.
“All part of the game,” he called it.
“If there’s one thing that’s not good for us, it is for there to be panic,” he said, handling 30 minutes of interrogation with a calm that Spain badly need to rediscover on the pitch. He spoke with clarity, with a quiet conviction, and with a memory that matters.
He remembers 2010. He had just turned 14 when Spain lost their first game of that World Cup and then went on to win the whole thing. That team were his idols. Their path, he suggested, is now the example.
“Like every game that doesn’t go as you’d like, every player lives with that mourning,” Merino said. “Some like to watch the game back straight away, some like to disconnect and think about other things instead. You have to swallow the disappointment. We have to recover as soon as we can.”
Luis de la Fuente’s mantra, he added, doesn’t change whether they win or draw: “It’s about trying to be better tomorrow, even if you’ve won. We’re always self‑critical.”
Merino isn’t the type to send grand public messages. He doesn’t reach for social media statements or slogans. “Personally, I am not one to send messages [to fans]; I think the best message is the next game, turning it around with a win.”
Family, ego and the ‘circus’
Still, there were messages in what he said. The word “family” came up more than once, but Merino refused to let it sit there as empty rhetoric.
“It is easy to talk of ‘family’ but when things don’t go well, when they are difficult, is when you truly see that ‘family’ – and I see unity, enthusiasm and a will to play well,” he insisted.
He spoke about ego, too, and how it fits inside a national team dressing room packed with club stars.
“It is important to have ego; as a footballer, with all the criticism from outside you need it to feel good on the pitch. But you also need the humility to know that this belongs to everyone. Players come to the national team because they are important [at their clubs] and find a new reality where only a few can play.
“That’s what the word ‘family’ is. We have to be united, support each other in every moment. You can be annoyed, angry, but that energy has to be positive.”
His choice of “mourning” was pounced on quickly. Did he regret it? Not really.
“Maybe I didn’t express myself well,” he replied, then circled back to the same word. “It was an attempt at a metaphor, a comparison. You’re so competitive that when it doesn’t go well, sometimes you go home and don’t even want to talk to your family. That’s why I say it’s like a mourning. Everyone deals with it differently. I like to face it and watch [games back] as soon as possible but that doesn’t mean it’s the best approach for everyone.”
The hard part, he knows, is that all of this unfolds in public.
“That’s a reality; it’s part of the business, the reason we earn what we earn, why football is so big, so important: because you’re here to cover it, to create stories through which we explain things to fans,” he said, gesturing towards the room. “There are players who like it more, or like it less, but it’s part of the ‘circus’ and we have to accept it and live with it.”
Time to think – maybe too much
What Spain would really like now is another game tomorrow. Another 90 minutes to wash away the stale taste of Atlanta. Instead, the expanded World Cup has handed them space. Too much of it, perhaps.
“What you want after a bad game is to play again straight away to get the bad taste out of your mouth,” Merino admitted. “The risk [of the expanded World Cup] is you have lots of time to go over it; it’s a mental challenge to deal with that, evade all that and be as free as you can mentally.”
He knows his own tendencies. “I’m one of those that finds it hard to swallow a bad result,” he said. “But with time I’ve realised that it is best to [confront it] and start trying to turn it around as soon as possible. Four, five hours and you realise that this [World Cup] has just started, that there is time to fix it.”
Then comes the second step: turning from self‑recrimination to solidarity.
“Then you can focus on the group, on what helps them,” Merino continued. “Put a hand on the shoulder of whoever is hurt because they didn’t play, or missed a chance. Or know who needs space for that mourning.”
The draw against Cape Verde hurt. So did the reaction. But there was a small, important lift when Saudi Arabia and Uruguay also drew, leaving the group tighter than it might have been and Spain’s margin for error slightly less brutal.
Merino admitted there was relief in that. It felt, he said, like they “start over”.
“I like to see the positive side,” he said. “The last world champion started by losing to Saudi Arabia. In 2010 Spain lost the first game and there was lots of criticism and they turned it around; that is an example to follow from people who were idols. I often take inspiration from athletes who have lived my dreams before I did. That generation means so much for this one: we want to emulate them.”
The mourning, then, is real. But it is not the end. For Spain, and for Merino, it is only useful if it becomes the beginning of something else.
