Mikel Merino has won the Premier League and the World Cup within a few months of each other, and yet the story he keeps coming back to is a seat on a coach. The Arsenal midfielder says a last-minute decision to sit somewhere else on Borussia Dortmund's team bus in 2017 may have saved his life.
The seat he did not take
Merino was 20 and playing for Dortmund when the club's bus was hit by explosives on its way to the home leg of a Champions League semi-final against Monaco. Three bombs, packed with metal pins and hidden in a hedge, went off as the bus passed. A large piece of shrapnel ended up lodged in the headrest of the seat Merino normally used. That day he had chosen the front instead, because his legs felt tight and the seats there reclined.
He told The Players' Tribune he thinks he has an angel on his shoulder. He remembers a deafening noise, blood on the floor, the smell of smoke and screams, and the sense that the bus was nearly tipping over. Afterwards he went to the hospital to wait for team-mate Marc Bartra, who needed an operation on a broken wrist. The match was put back by a day, a decision that Dortmund's manager at the time, Thomas Tuchel, criticised. Sergei Wenergold was jailed in 2018 after admitting the attack.
Six months, and the clock already running
The same interview covers a much more recent setback. In February Merino suffered a stress fracture in his right foot. The doctor's estimate was six months, and the World Cup was four months away. He says he was too shocked to feel sad and simply did the arithmetic, and that he only broke down when he had to tell his wife, Lola.
His answer was to push. Merino had been in Spain's qualifying campaign for the 2022 World Cup and missed the final squad, and he did not want to go through that again. When surgeons offered to drill two screws into the foot for support, he says he told them to do it.
A half-hour against Palace
He watched Arsenal secure their first Premier League title in 22 years from the sidelines, then set his sights on the final league game at Crystal Palace on 24 May. Spain coach Luis de la Fuente was due to name his World Cup squad the following day. Merino, who had played zero minutes in four months, says he argued all week with Arteta and the physios until they agreed to give him half an hour at Selhurst Park.
He treated that cameo as his audition. The next day he sat on the sofa with Spanish TV on, and when the squad was read out his name came up. He says he hugged Lola, kissed his son Marco, and his phone filled with messages. Five months after that stress fracture he was lifting the World Cup with Spain.
Player facts: Mikel Merino signed for Arsenal from Real Sociedad in 2024. He is a Premier League and World Cup winner. Source of the quotes: his interview with The Players' Tribune, as reported by BBC Sport.
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