Mikel Merino has revealed that a players-only dressing room meeting after a disappointing draw with Wolves was the moment Arsenal won the Premier League title.
The Gunners led 2-0 against the side bottom of the table in February but conceded late on to draw 2-2, raising questions about the team's mentality. Merino admitted that even the Arsenal players had their confidence shaken by the result, but it led to what he believes was a title-winning meeting.
Meeting without the boss
"One slip, and all we heard was 'same old Arsenal'," Merino said. "To be honest, there were doubts inside the team too. Giving away a 2–0 lead should never happen. But the day after the game, the players had a meeting inside the dressing room, without the boss."
"Everyone spoke up. Nobody talked about tactics. This was about how a group of human beings handle adversity together. I spoke about how I saw the team from the outside, and I said that this was something we as players had to handle, because the boss couldn’t do everything for us."
"When one person has so many tasks at one club, you need leaders who can figure things out on their own. Well, at this club, we do."
Injury fears
Merino was out of action during that period due to a serious foot injury. The Spaniard has previously spoken about needing a mobility scooter to get around, after the injury left him unable to walk for two months.
Reflecting on those months at the start of 2026, Merino admitted he feared his career might be over. "The situation was even worse, because the specialist who did the scan had never seen a stress fracture in that part of the foot," Merino said. "He’d been doing this for 30 years. He had called five of the best specialists in the world, and none of them had seen it either. Nobody knew how my foot would recover, or if it would recover at all. Part of me feared that I would never play football again."
"I drove home in silence. When I told my wife, Lola, what the doctor said, that’s when I broke down. My brain already understood, but my heart needed me to say it out loud."
World Cup heroics
Merino recovered to make one appearance off the bench on the final day of the Premier League season, having urged Mikel Arteta to take a risk with his fitness. The midfielder was desperate to secure his place in Spain's World Cup squad, and that cameo proved enough for him to be selected.
Merino then dragged Spain through the knockout stages. He scored a stoppage-time winner against Portugal in the last-16 and stepped up again in the quarter-finals, as his 88th-minute finish downed Belgium. He came off the bench in the final against Argentina and, although he did not score, Merino still made a telling contribution.
When Lionel Messi hammered a shot at goal in the final minutes of the match, it was Merino who got in the way to block it with his face. "I went down like I’d been shot, which I had," he said. "I got hit so hard that I was actually blind in one eye for the rest of the match. For a moment, I was really worried."
"But when the whistle went, I just felt this surge of relief, because we hadn’t messed it up."
