It was an image that spoke volumes. All bar two of Argentina’s players had run to the far corner flag, taking it in turns to leap atop the bundle that had formed around Lautaro Martínez. He had just scored the penalty that confirmed their place in the semi-finals, shaking off the scare caused by Wout Weghorst and the Netherlands.
Across the pitch from them lay Emiliano Martínez, splayed over the turf and thumping the ground with his fists. The goalkeeper was not alone for long: while everyone else had sprinted left, Lionel Messi made a beeline to the right. The pair embraced in a clinch that may yet come to define their side’s campaign.
Messi’s choice of direction was no accident. Martínez had saved the first two spot-kicks he faced, from Virgil van Dijk and Steven Berghuis, laying the platform for his namesake’s clinically executed decider. If any individual deserved plaudits it was him. But his importance extends far beyond one night in Lusail, as Messi has come to appreciate well. It is not stretching things to suggest that, after his captain, Martínez has become Argentina’s most important player.
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“It’s difficult not to think about how hard the road here was,” Martínez said before the World Cup final. Argentina have kept their counsel during the run-in and it said plenty that he was chosen for the only mandatory media duties in advance, facing a packed auditorium on his own. That sight captured his achievement.
“In Argentina they didn’t know me as a player like I deserved and wanted,” he said of the period when, at 27, he was still grasping for a breakthrough at Arsenal. Three years on he is a household name, a cult hero, and almost as likely to settle things as his nation’s icon.
Quiet and eloquent away from the pitch, Martínez has become a booming presence on it for Argentina. He did not make his senior international debut until June 2021, after an exceptional season for Aston Villa, but the legend grew rapidly. Within a month he was repelling three penalties in a Copa América semi-final shootout against Colombia, the accompanying trash-talk and machismo earning his place in folklore as much as the saves.
The second of his stops, from Yerry Mina, is the one that resonates. Martínez had been knocked unconscious after a heavy challenge from the centre-back during a World Cup qualifier four weeks previously; revenge was on his mind and in a stadium that was almost empty due to Covid-19 restrictions he instigated an audible back-and-forth – “You’re laughing but you’re nervous … I’m going to eat you alive” – that successfully spooked his opponent. It is far from the only example of a persona that uses personality to gain an edge alongside ability. Coming so soon after his introduction to the fold, though, it was a shortcut to a country’s hearts.
Messi called Martínez a “phenomenon” afterwards and Lionel Scaloni, the coach, spoke of “the security he is transmitting”. Argentina would win the trophy against Brazil at the Maracanã. “People considered Brazil the favourites and the same thing is happening right now, they’re favouring France,” Martínez said of his next major assignment. “We always like to feel the opponent is favourite, because we don’t feel superior or inferior to anyone, but we have the best player of all time.”
In 2018 Martínez, recently returned from an unsuccessful loan at Getafe that left him pondering his future in the sport, watched Argentina’s ill-fated campaign in Russia from the stands with his brother. “I told him that in the next one, I would be there,” he said. Four years previously he had been cooking an asado for his family and watching in pain while Mario Götze broke hearts on a less successful night in Rio. “I know what it’s like to be a fan, that’s why I put myself in those shoes,” he explained. Martínez has delivered on his own prediction and, in the process, shown himself to be a figure supporters can relate to.
It explains his popularity. “I’m just a normal guy,” he said. “When things go well I don’t fall into euphoria; I don’t get depressed when things go bad. When I go to Argentina I try to show solidarity and contribute. I’m from Mar del Plata, in a deprived area, and I feel very identified with them.”
Martínez’s uncomfortable childhood, in which money and the most basic comforts were scarce, spurred his move to England at 17 and perhaps explains the tenacity that has hauled him above the slew of goalkeeping deputies who never quite make it. “I’ve always fought,” he said, and he has had to. Only after a decade being shunted between north London and six temporary employers did the public see what coaches always knew: that a keeper capable of breathing the most rarefied air had been bursting to get out.
Now the world lies at his feet, or perhaps in his palms. Martínez has been far from angelic over the past month: that aggravating side is simply part of him, as the Dutch bench found out via a volley of expletives after the hug with Messi had concluded. He and his teammates had been enraged by what he later termed “nonsense” from Louis van Gaal in the buildup. The veteran coach had suggested his team would be favourites for any penalty decider and Martínez would have none of that.
If Sunday evening goes the distance, Martínez will be confident of claiming his biggest scalp yet. No prizes for guessing who would be first to congratulate him.
