Lisandro Martinez came up with the perfect response after Erik ten Hag dropped him at Ajax, showing the kind of spirit which convinced the Manchester United manager to sign him this summer.
Martinez, 24, was officially unveiled as the latest player to join Ten Hag's Old Trafford revolution on Wednesday. The Argentina defender arrives with a £55million price tag and a fine reputation thanks to his three successful years working under Ten Hag at Ajax.
The duo won back-to-back Eredivisie titles and the Dutch Cup during their time together in Amsterdam, with Martinez crowned the club's Player of the Year for the season just gone. The player's ability to perform to a high level at centre-back, left-back and in midfield make him an attractive enough prospect, but Ten Hag was also impressed by his mentality when he coached him in the Netherlands.
As reported by The Athletic, the Dutchman was desperate to sign a defensive option he can trust and settled on Martinez after recalling an episode when he dropped the Argentine. Ten Hag was delighted with the response he received from the man he had benched and quickly reinstated him to the starting XI.
The report does not specify when the saga unfolded but a glance at Martinez's minutes in recent seasons suggests it may have come midway through the 2020/21 campaign. Having struggled to impose himself in the starting line-up during the first half of the campaign, he was an unused substitute for four consecutive league games at the turn of the year.
However, Martinez battled back into contention and started 14 of Ajax's final 15 Eredivisie games that term to help the club win the league-cup double. He never looked back from there and would have been ever-present in the line-up last season but for a muscle injury sustained in April.
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Ten Hag's admiration for Martinez is mirrored by the latter's respect for his manager and his methods. "[He's] very intense, for sure. Good football. Winning mentality, you know? That's the most important [thing]," Martinez told MUTV of the United manager.
"Every player needs to have things clear. I think he's very clear also. So I think, with him, every day you can learn and then, in the game, you can understand also fully – tactics and everything. How did he help me to improve? In how we can understand fully the situations, the decisions inside the pitch. He's there in every detail."
