Mikel Merino Reflects on Mourning After Spain's Draw with Cape Verde

Mikel Merino calls it “mourning” – and he spells it out, with a “u”. No one has died, he reminds you, but sometimes football comes close to that hollow feeling. A 0-0 draw with Cape Verde in a World Cup opener is not a tragedy, not even a defeat, yet in the Spain camp it has left a chill in the air that will take some shifting.

Six long days separate that flat night in Atlanta from their next chance to put things right. Six days back at their Tennessee base, living with a result that was never in the script.

On Monday morning, only one Spain player stayed away from the training pitch at 11am. That made Merino the obvious candidate to walk into the press room and face what he called “part of the circus”. Seven desks of reporters in front of him, the noise of doubt and disappointment humming in the background. He sat down, took a breath and went to work.

“If there’s one thing that’s not good for us, it is for there to be panic,” the Arsenal midfielder said. Thirty minutes later, he had given his team something close to a voice and a shape: clear, calm, insistent. This was not a man looking for excuses. This was someone trying to show how you live with a punch to the gut and still stand up straight.

He has seen this movie before. In 2010, Spain lost their opening game and ended up lifting the World Cup. Merino had just turned 14 then, a teenager watching his idols stumble and then surge. The memory has not faded.

“Like every game that doesn’t go as you’d like, every player lives with that mourning,” he 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] always says that it’s about trying to be better tomorrow, even if you’ve won. We’re always self‑critical. Personally, I am not one to send messages; I think the best message is the next game, turning it around with a win.”

The word “family” kept surfacing around this squad in the buildup. Easy to say when you are winning. Harder when Cape Verde have just taken two points off you and the knives are being sharpened back home.

“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,” Merino said. He talked about ego and humility, about the strange alchemy of a national team where stars from their clubs must accept that here, some will sit.

“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 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 quickly picked apart. Too strong? Too dark for a goalless draw? Merino listened, then stood his ground, tweaking the edges but not the heart of it.

“Maybe I didn’t express myself well,” he said at first, then circled back. “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.”

That is the battle now: not with Cape Verde or the next opponent, but with time and noise. In a bloated World Cup, the gap between games can feel like an eternity. Too much space to replay missed chances in your head, too many hours for criticism to seep under the door.

“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 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.”

Freedom is hard when every step is tracked. He knows the deal. “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 journalists. “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.”

He is one of those who struggles to let go. Defeats, even draws that feel like defeats, stick to him. Over time, though, he has learned not to drown in them.

“Everyone handles these moments their own personal way. I’m one of those that finds it hard to swallow a bad result 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 you can focus on the group, on what helps them. 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 table brought a small dose of comfort. Saudi Arabia and Uruguay also drew, leaving the group finely balanced and Spain, in Merino’s words, feeling they “start over”. A reset, if not a clean slate.

“I like to see the positive side,” he said. The examples are there for anyone who wants them. “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 this Spain side, it is the test that will show whether “family” is just a word on a wall or something that can carry them through a World Cup storm.