Aitana Bonmati interview: ‘I found myself in a situation of suffering. You feel alone'

New York Times

3 days ago

It was 7am on Thursday, June 26 when Aitana Bonmati began to feel unwell.
She had been in Madrid for four days with the Spanish national team preparing for a match against Japan and the European Championship to follow. Like the other players, she was up and getting ready for an earlier-than-usual training session in an attempt to avoid the intense heat.
Advertisement
'That's when I started to feel very ill,' Bonmati says, speaking to The Athletic in Lausanne, Switzerland, two days before Spain's Euro 2025 quarter-final against the hosts. 'I had a bad headache, which surprised me because it was constant and wouldn't go away.
'I was like that until Friday at noon, when the doctor told me to go to the hospital because something was wrong. He wanted to rule out anything more serious than a simple cold or a mild illness. There, they did a CT scan and everything came back fine. Then they did a blood test and everything came back fine. Then they did a lumbar puncture, which is where they found I had viral meningitis.'
Bonmati, the reigning two-time Ballon d'Or winner, was lying on her hospital bed when the doctor delivered the news. Fortunately, it was not bacterial meningitis, which takes much longer to recover from.
That evening, her Spain team-mates were in action against Japan in their final game before departing, three days later, for the Euros.
During the match, the midfielder posted a picture from her hospital bed, with the game on the television in front of her and an emoji of an arm flexing its biceps, as if to say she felt strong.
'She is a very important player for us, we are going to wait for her until the end,' Spain head coach Montse Tome said after the match.
At the hospital, the 27-year-old continued to talk with doctors.
'They explained what meningitis meant. I also started looking it up on the internet because meningitis is something you may have heard of but don't really know what it is.'
Everything pointed to the player missing the first matches of the Euros. Alarm bells rang.
'The diagnosis was that I might be unwell for five to 10 days, and then I might have some symptoms,' she adds. 'At that point, I didn't get too worked up. I was coming to terms with the fact that I had something that I didn't even know what it was. I accepted it and carried on.
Advertisement
'I was away from my home environment because I was with the national team and at that precise moment I was alone. Then a lifelong friend of mine, Maria, came. She came on Saturday and stayed until Sunday. She slept in my room with me. I didn't have any other visitors because I didn't want to bring people over if I didn't know when I was going to be discharged.
'I found myself in a situation of suffering, because when something happens to you that you don't understand where it comes from, you feel a little alone because you're not in your close environment. But I'm very grateful to Maria for always supporting me. It's good to have people like that around.
'At that moment, I wasn't thinking about whether I would be able to come back or not because I was confident I would get through it. At no point did I think I was out of the Euros.
'I took it easy and I didn't get carried away. All the work I do every day to take care of myself: to eat well, to be healthy, not to smoke, not to drink alcohol, basic things like that, to play sport, obviously… I think your body remembers how you treat it. I'm not a doctor, but I think that helped me.'
Three days after being admitted to the hospital, Bonmati was discharged. The next day, she travelled to Lausanne, Spain's base camp, to rejoin her team-mates.
'Fortunately, I was only really unwell for two or three days, but then I made a radical change for the better,' she says. 'I didn't have a gradual progression; I went from feeling very bad to feeling fine.'
At a press conference prior to Spain's opening match against Portugal, Tome said the player's progress was positive, that she had shown a very good attitude but that 'Aitana had to be slowed down'.
'From then on, I wanted to speed things up because I felt fine and had no symptoms whatsoever,' Bonmati says. 'I wanted to start training, even if it was gradually. I wanted to get my body working.
Advertisement
'It's part of who I am. I don't want to waste a single day. If I'm 100 per cent fit to be there, I'll be there. I don't like wasting days. Here, a day lost is a day less. On the Sunday when I was discharged, I trained in Las Rozas (Madrid). I went to the gym and moved around a bit. I had been lying down for three or four days without doing anything.
'On Monday morning, I trained again at the gym a little harder, starting to try some jumps to see how the pressure in my head felt. Everything went well. I arrived in Lausanne and started training the next day. The group was already training, and I trained separately.
'Obviously, I would like the progress to have been faster. I suppose everyone here is aware and takes some responsibility because it's not just any illness. I understand that. But I felt fine, I wanted to start feeling part of the group. I had already felt out of the group for a few days. If I felt fine, why couldn't I come back sooner? That was the frustration I felt. Looking at it in perspective, I suppose you have to understand everyone's opinion.
'I don't consider myself a player who finds it difficult to get into shape; I had a lot of confidence in my body and my physical condition. It has been a learning process. Life sometimes throws you these setbacks that make you deal with certain situations you're not used to.
'I wanted to be on the pitch, I wanted to feel good. I wanted to enjoy and I haven't enjoyed what's happened to me very much because I've had to deal with this frustration.'
Remarkably, six days after the diagnosis, Bonmati came off the bench with nine minutes remaining of the 5-0 win over Portugal.
She had spent the entire match standing in the technical area or by the bench, waving her arms as she always does when she plays to communicate with her team-mates. Like a police officer, as her father always jokes.
'On the one hand, I felt proud to have been part of the match and to have been able to play for a few minutes,' she says. 'On the other, I felt frustrated… But obviously, with what had happened to me, I had to be more grateful than frustrated.'
Against Belgium, all eyes were on whether she would return to the starting XI or not. Tome decided to go with Vicky Lopez again.
'It was something that was discussed internally,' Bonmati says. 'We wanted to take good care of my physical condition so I would be in the best possible shape for the most important part, which is now (the knockout stages). Having been in the hospital, I had to respect the timeframe; they treated it as if it were an injury. When a player is injured, they're not going to exploit her.
Advertisement
'Sometimes you have to reach agreements or understand the other person's point of view. As a player, I was frustrated to see the process taking so long, but I know it was done with my best interests in their minds.'
She made her first start of the Euros against Italy in the final group match — a 3-1 win — and is now able to think again about adding the one title that is missing from her collection.
'What we have done so far is very good and it's a good platform to face what's coming,' she says. 'But now we have decisive, do-or-die matches against tough opponents. Next up is Switzerland, the host nation. We're back in the quarter-finals against the host nation — in 2022, it was England. Now it's Switzerland.
'They've had a great tournament and, as the hosts, there are things that work in their favour. The crowd will be behind them. But it's also cool as a player to experience these moments.'
Which other teams has she been impressed by?
'I really like France and Germany,' she says. 'France are a different team from what we've seen in recent years. They're very young with a lot of talent and versatility. They have a rich bench to change things up and energise the games. They have some very good players, such as Delphine Cascarino.
'Then there is Germany. The other day, they conceded four goals and had a player sent off, but they started the game (against Sweden) with a brutal level of intensity. In fact, we commented with some players that they were flying. I'm really liking (Klara) Buhl, I think she's at a very good level. (Jule) Brand too.'
Spain are based in Lausanne, on the shores of Lake Geneva, and the team are making the most of what Switzerland has to offer.
'It's one of my favourite countries,' she says. 'I came here years ago on a trip, in winter. It's a country that transports you to tranquillity. It seems that everywhere you go is like a postcard landscape. Everywhere.
Advertisement
'Being in a city like Lausanne, with the hotel in the centre, gives us freedom to visit places. The other day we had a day off and we all did what we wanted. We went on an excursion I organised to some mountains nearby, on a rack railway, with spectacular views. It's all about breathing fresh air and tranquillity all the time.
'It's something that's sometimes lacking in Catalonia, which also has stunning landscapes, but in the area where I live, it's not the same. Switzerland is an amazing country.'
But now, with the quarter-finals under way, it is time for business.
'I'm approaching this final stretch with a lot of energy, enthusiasm and excitement, eager to play three good matches,' Bonmati adds. 'Let's hope it's three, because that would be good news. And I'm feeling very well.'