{"id":923234,"date":"2026-10-06T21:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T21:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/923234\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T21:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T21:34:10","slug":"croatia-1-2-spain-substitute-mikel-merino-scores-twice-as-spain-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/923234\/","title":{"rendered":"Croatia 1-2 Spain: Substitute Mikel Merino scores twice as Spain win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Arsenal midfielder Mikel Merino came off the bench to score twice as world champions Spain fought back from a goal down to beat Croatia in the Nations League.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Coach Luis de la Fuente&#8217;s Spain went into this game looking to record their 11th consecutive win, but they fell behind in the 17th minute when Ivan Perisic headed in.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Croatia had been thrashed 7-0 by England in their previous Nations League fixture but were given a standing ovation at half-time in this game following a much-improved display.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, Spain were stronger after the break and drew level in the 61st minute when Dani Olmo got onto a poor clearance and picked out Merino, who made no mistake.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lamine Yamal saw a goalbound shot blocked as Spain pushed for the winner, before Perisic was sent off for Croatia just moments after seeing a strong effort saved. The 37-year-old was shown a second yellow for a foul on Marc Cucurella.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That dismissal perhaps proved costly and Spain snatched the three points two minutes from time when Merino latched on to a fine ball from Arsenal team-mate Martin Zubimendi before sending a brilliant finish into the back of the net.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Spain are top of League A &#8211; Group 3, three points ahead of England who comfortably beat the Czech Republic 3-0 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arsenal midfielder Mikel Merino came off the bench to score twice as world champions Spain fought back from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-923234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}