Mikel Merino on life with a footballing father

Mikel Merino was born into football. His father, Angel Merino, had a long and successful career in La Liga, playing for six different clubs in a 17-year career before going into management. In fact he was arguably in his heyday – as a regular in Celta Vigo’s midfield – when Mikel was born in 1996.

So there’s no doubt football is in the blood for Mikel. “Football is my passion,” he says. “Football is the reason I’m living with such intensity every day, and I love it. I cannot help but watch football, play football. I love having the ball around me.”

But it’s not just his father who instilled this love of the game into Mikel in his youth. Our midfielder also credits a very influential early coach, whose advice and values have remained fundamentals for Mikel throughout his career, as he explains: “Back in the day, when I was young, our coach – who was a really good friend of mine and the family – had a real focus on the mental aspect of football.

“He taught us to enjoy it, to try to be a good teammate and try to do everything to be the best version of yourself. Obviously then on top of that, you have the technical basics: passing with your right, passing with your left, how to balance your body and so on. But the main focus for me back then was just the mental aspects of the game.

“His name is David Cabrera. He went by the nickname of ’Pi’, and in fact I’m still in touch with him,” Mikel adds. “I was five or six years old when I started playing, then my school team was the first team I joined. Pi was really, really good for the players. Not just for the coaching, but he had a good relationship with the players, like a mentor.

“He wanted to develop good people, not just good players, so he always checked in on us, making sure everything was all right with the kids, and he would always speak to the parents as well. So it was a good beginning for all of us.

“My parents were the ones I followed in terms of behaving and learning from them, but Pi was also good for me because football was my big passion, and also the educational aspect of it as well, because we were taught not just about things on the pitch.”

His father Angel played more than 500 times in his professional career, and then coached at Osasuna and Pena Sport, so Mikel has always had a guiding influence alongside him – someone who has been there and done it.

Mikel is now 28, a European champion with Spain and an experienced midfielder in his own right, but does he still lean on his father for advice from time to time?

“Yes, because both of us just love football, love tactics, and because he is a coach as well he knows what happens in the game. Still now we talk about every single game, actions and situations where I can improve, and stuff like that.

“But growing up, having him with me helped me a lot,” Mikel adds. “Not only talking about tactics or about football, but also seeing how he behaved. When I had troubles or problems in the game when I was younger, those years where I was struggling, the kind of messages he was sending me were always about being patient.

“He told me to keep trying and keep playing. Also he told me about being responsible for my own actions. He told me not to think that anything was other people’s fault, but always to think about what can I do to improve this? What have I done wrong, and what do I have to do better to overcome this problem.

"My father told me about being responsible for my own actions... always to think about what can I do to improve this?"

“He used to be my biggest critic back in the day!” Mikel adds. “Right now he probably doesn’t tell me everything he thinks, and my mother is more of a critic now! But he has always been there to help me.

"He always told me not to be too worried by the critics. Listen to the important people around me, those who want the best for me, and take it as a positive. Don’t see it as a negative and be angry or mad – use it as fuel from those people who want the best for me.”

Mikel’s uncle – Angel’s older brother Julian – was also a professional footballer, mainly in the lower divisions in Spain, so there is obviously something in the genes.

Mikel pays tribute to his dad with his goal celebrations, circling the corner flag like his father did, famously, after scoring for Osasuna back in 1991. Mikel first emulated it when scoring for Spain in the Euros, at the same stadium in Stuttgart where Angel netted in the UEFA Cup.

But one thing his dad never did was play for a foreign club. This is Mikel’s second spell in England after playing for Newcastle in 2017, on loan from Borussia Dortmund.

“That was tough at the beginning, obviously,” Mikel says about moving away for the first time, “because you’re always used to being in your comfort zone. With your parents doing everything, speaking your own language, you are great there.

“Then suddenly you have to move to Germany and try to speak German or English, which you don’t know. Then to Newcastle, and learning Geordie is even harder than German!

“But all those things make you evolve and mature. They become useful in your future, and right I feel I’m prepared for whatever comes to me because I had those periods before where I was out of my comfort zone and had to adapt and learn new languages and be uncomfortable for a while.”

Mikel is excelling in the Premier League now though. He arrived with a reputation for his physical strengths, winning duels and dominating the midfield, and he’s won 56 duels so far in the league this season. Ahead of our recent Aston Villa game, he averaged one every 12 minutes on the pitch – a better rate than any of his teammates.

His physical prowess, though, wasn’t always one of his main qualities growing up.

“When I was a child, about eight or nine, I was at a really, really good technical level,” he says. “But then when I started to grow up and mature, I matured a little later than the rest. So my physical aspects were a little undeveloped, compared to the rest of the players.

“So I had to keep up with the rest through my technical, tactical and mental aspects, because the physicality was not there for me yet.

“In those years I struggled a little bit, but when I turned 17, in the second year of my academy team, I grew a lot in a single summer. And that year is when I started to reach a really high level.

“Then I started to develop more. I got taller and stronger, and I already had the technique because I’d been concentrating on that. Before that summer I mainly played as a winger, because I was small and had good technical ability.

"But then I grew taller, got stronger and started to play as a midfielder. That’s when I started to learn how to play in midfield and I started to show more of what I could do.”

"I feel I’m prepared for whatever comes to me because I had those periods before where I was out of my comfort zone"

In many ways Mikel is that perfect blend of technique and power, and it’s not surprising that he says he always favoured the technical side of training, although he credits school for his mental qualities.

“I’ve always liked working on passing and passing drills,” he says. “There were a lot of passing drills back in the day, even if my team didn’t even play that way! But training was about getting the ball to the right spots, using the right body rotation, using both feet. Also a lot of possession drills, keeping the ball from the other team. Those were the ones I liked the most.

“School was huge for me too,” he adds. “Especially when you have in mind that all of my friends, my football and my whole life were in my school. It was huge, not only in terms of my friends and my relationships with people, but also for how you can train your mind. How you can be smarter, how you can be a wiser guy. That also helps in the football world.

“You don’t realise it at the time,” he adds. “I think at the moment that those things are happening, you just focus on the present. I am a really resilient person – my parents have educated me in that way.

“Whenever there’s a problem or a situation where I’m not comfortable, my mindset is just that you have to face it and overcome it. You don’t think about whether this is good or is it bad, it is something that happens and you have to overcome it.

“But with time when you look back, and you have more situations that are difficult, you start to think: ’OK, this is something that I have done before.’ And because I have done it before, it comes easier now.”