Spain's World Cup Opener: Mourning After the Draw with Cape Verde

The morning after felt heavy. Not quite a funeral, but close enough for Mikel Merino to reach for the word “mourning” – and to spell it out, with a “u”. No one had lost, technically. Spain had drawn 0-0 with Cape Verde in their World Cup opener. On paper, it was a point. In the gut, it felt like something more painful.

This was not the start they had imagined.

Six long days now stretch out in front of them at their Tennessee base before they can put it right. Six days to replay chances, arguments, doubts. Six days to make sure that one flat night in Atlanta does not become a storyline.

Inside that, Merino insisted, Spain must live it “as a family”.

Facing the inquisition

If there was a symbol of how serious this draw felt, it came at 11am the next morning. While the rest of the squad were out on the pitch, loosening legs and clearing heads, Merino walked into a different arena.

Seven long rows of reporters stared back at him in the press room. Cameras, microphones, murmurs. Outside, the noise of a country fretting over a goalless stalemate with Cape Verde. Inside, a 30‑minute cross‑examination.

He didn’t flinch.

“If there’s one thing that’s not good for us, it is for there to be panic,” he said, calmly, answering every angle with a clarity that cut through the tension. This was not a player hiding behind clichés. It was someone trying to explain what a bad night really feels like inside a dressing room.

“Like every game that doesn’t go as you’d like, every player lives with that mourning,” he said. Some players, he explained, dive straight back into the footage, rewatching the game almost before the sweat has dried. Others need to disconnect, to think about anything else. The key is the same: “You have to swallow the disappointment. We have to recover as soon as we can.”

Luis de la Fuente’s message, Merino added, doesn’t change with the result: be better tomorrow, even if you’ve won. “We’re always self-critical,” he said. As for grand statements to the public, he is not one for social media speeches. “Personally, I am not one to send messages; I think the best message is the next game, turning it around with a win.”

Family, ego and the “mourning” word

The word he chose – mourning – did not take long to be picked apart. It never does at a World Cup. Merino listened, then pushed back gently.

“Maybe I didn’t express myself well,” he offered, before circling back to the same metaphor. Because actually, he had expressed it exactly as he felt it.

“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.”

Behind that choice of word sat something deeper: how a squad lives with frustration, ego and hierarchy when the stakes are this high.

“It is easy to talk of ‘family’,” Merino said, “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 talked about ego not as a dirty word, but a necessity. “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 that ego has to coexist with humility, with the understanding that “this belongs to everyone”.

Players arrive at the national team as leaders at their clubs, used to starting, used to being decisive. Then they confront a different reality: only a few can play. The rest have to live with it.

“That’s what the word ‘family’ is,” Merino said. “We have to be united, support each other in every moment. You can be annoyed, angry, but that energy has to be positive.”

The circus and the silence

The real test, he admitted, is that all of this unfolds in public. Every missed chance, every tactical tweak, every dropped point is turned over and replayed.

“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, looking out at the press rows. Some players enjoy that spotlight. Others would rather disappear. Either way, “it’s part of the ‘circus’ and we have to accept it and live with it.”

Merino counts himself among those who struggle to digest a bad result. It sits there, heavy, until he forces himself to confront it. Over time, he has learned to speed that process up.

“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,” he said. Give it four or five hours, and perspective creeps back in. “You realise that this [World Cup] has just started, that there is time to fix it.”

That is when the focus shifts from the individual to the group. Who needs a hand on the shoulder because they didn’t play? Who is still replaying a missed chance in their mind? Who, on the other hand, needs space for their own private mourning?

“What you want after a bad game is to play again straight away to get the bad taste out of your mouth,” Merino admitted. This, though, is the expanded World Cup, where the gaps between games can feel like an eternity. “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.”

Echoes of 2010

If there was a sliver of relief, it came from elsewhere. Saudi Arabia and Uruguay drew, leaving Spain feeling, in Merino’s words, like they “start over”. The group has not run away from them.

“I like to see the positive side,” he said. And he has seen this film before. The reigning world champions lost their opener to Saudi Arabia at the last World Cup and still went on to lift the trophy. Spain themselves lost to Switzerland in their first game in 2010 and were savaged back home. They ended up champions of the world.

Merino remembers that vividly. He had just turned 14. Those players were idols then; they remain reference points now.

“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,” he said. “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 so is the memory of how quickly it can give way to something else.