“I looked behind me and saw blood on the floor – smoke, screams.”

The moment was more than nine years ago and yet it had a significant impact on Mikel Merino. The Spaniard is 20 years old and at the beginning of his career when three explosive devices exploded from a hedge in the Höchsten district of Dortmund on April 11, 2017. Destination: the Borussia Dortmund team bus, on the way from the team hotel to the Champions League game against AS Monaco.

Merino, a player at BVB at the time, is also on the bus. "Many young people probably don't believe that it really happened or how bad it was. It shaped us all," Merino now remembers the attack in a long, personal letter on the platform "The Players' Tribune".

"There was a deafening bang. I remember the bus almost tipping over. I looked behind me and saw blood on the ground - smoke, screaming. I remember being in the hospital later that night, waiting for Marc Bartra, who had suffered a severe cut on his wrist," Merino writes. His Spanish teammate Bartra suffered a broken spoke as a result of the explosions, and the splinters also caused so-called foreign body blow-ins. He was operated on the night after the attack. A motorcycle police officer was also injured.

Merino remained uninjured, probably only by a lucky coincidence. He didn't sit in the seat next to Bartra as usual, but further up the front of the bus. "My legs felt a bit tense and the front seats could be folded back. So I sat there instead. That may have saved my life," says the now 30-year-old. The next day he was told that “there was a huge piece of shrapnel stuck in the headrest of the seat next to Marc.”

Merino's conclusion: "I think I have a guardian angel. I'm actually lucky to be alive at all." BVB lost the catch-up game, which had already been scheduled for the following day, 2-3. Merino played at BVB until the summer of 2017 before moving to Newcastle United. He now plays for Arsenal FC and became European champions with the Spanish national team in 2024 and world champions last summer.

The German-Russian Sergej W., who was 28 at the time of the crime, was responsible for the attack. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison for 28 counts of attempted murder. Sergei W. acted for economic reasons. He wanted to benefit from a falling BVB share price as a result of the attack and had bought put warrants for this purpose. Their value increases when the share price falls.