Spain playmaker Aitana Bonmati cut a disconsolate figure as she picked up her Player of the Tournament award at Euro 2025 on Sunday, minutes after her side finished as runners-up after losing a penalty shootout to England in the final.<\/p>\n
Bonmati<\/a> bounced back from a meningitis scare ahead of the tournament to play a crucial role in Spain<\/a>‘s progress to the final.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n However, on Sunday Spain struggled to unlock the England<\/a> defence and Bonmati missed her spot-kick in the shootout as she slumped to another painful defeat<\/a> following her club side Barcelona’s Champions League final loss to Arsenal in May.<\/p>\n “It’s hard to see you right now,<\/b>” she told reporters. “Two months ago I found myself in this situation with the club. You have to value more when things are going well, we have been better on the pitch, not on penalties<\/b>,” she said.<\/p>\n The 27-year-old apologized to the Spanish people for not being able to deliver a victory against an England side that was no match for them in terms of skill, but who refused to give up.<\/p>\n “I assume my part of my responsibility, I play for the team and for many more people. There is no point in playing a better game and missing penalties,<\/b>” she said.<\/p>\n “For me, England is a team capable of not playing well and winning. There are teams that don’t need much to win<\/b>.”<\/p>\n England took the chance they were offered and though Spain found themselves on the losing side, Bonmati was philosophical.<\/p>\n “We haven’t lost a game (in 90 minutes), we have received support and I feel bad about that too. We have won off the field of play and that is valuable too<\/b>,” she explained, before promising to come back stronger.<\/p>\n “We are a trained team, we have already shown that we know how to overcome. We hope to reach (Euro) 2029 at full capacity and try again.<\/b>“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain playmaker Aitana Bonmati cut a disconsolate figure as she picked up her Player of the Tournament award…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-300362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114934819454915409","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}