In Dortmund, Mikel Merino has revisited a night from 2017 that still sits outside the usual memory of a European away trip. The Spanish midfielder recalled the bomb attack on Borussia Dortmund’s team bus and said that a last-minute change of seat spared him potentially catastrophic injuries.
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Merino was part of the Borussia Dortmund squad when explosives targeted the team coach on the way to a Champions League match in April 2017. He has described how moving seats shortly before the attack proved decisive for his safety.
The blast caused serious damage to the vehicle and injured defender Marc Bartra, while the match against Monaco was postponed until the following day. Merino’s account underlines the personal proximity of the incident for Dortmund’s players: he believes he avoided very serious harm because he was no longer sitting in his original place.
The episode remains one of the most disturbing events in modern European club football, turning what should have been an ordinary matchday journey through Dortmund into an attack on the team itself.
