From a fan at the 2018 World Cup to a savior in Qatar, here's Argentina's most improbable hero
LUSAIL, Qatar — Argentina’s World Cup life flashed before its collective eyes in the 123rd minute of the eternal game. This was before King Leo’s coronation and after most of the madness. In stoppage time of extra time of the World Cup final for all time, France’s Randal Kolo Muani had escaped from a drained defense and, 8,000 miles away, from Buenos Aires to Córdoba to Rosario, Argentine tears readied themselves beneath hope and faith.
They’d been flowing for three decades, uncontrollably after successive soccer heartbreaks. Emiliano Martinez was one of the millions who’d cried them. He was, throughout the last decade, a journeyman backup goalkeeper scrounging together a career in the lower leagues of England. Four years later, after thoughts of retirement, he traveled with his brother to the 2018 World Cup as a fan. He was, and still is, in his own words, “Just a regular guy.”
But here at the Lusail Stadium on Sunday, with Kolo Muani racing onto a bouncing ball, and with Lionel Messi’s last World Cup chance suddenly imperiled, the 30-year-old Martinez crept out of his goal mouth, chopped his feet and spread his wings.
He became an Argentine legend with a sprawling save, and then with his penalty-shootout heroics. With shenanigans and classic s***housery, he slithered into the minds of nervous French players, then repelled one penalty and saw another flash wide of the post. He punched the air in celebration. He shimmied, mischievously, to celebrate mind-games won and a World Cup trophy within reach.
And then he collapsed to the grass, to a stage he never even imagined he’d grace. He dabbed at tears as he scanned a delirious crowd for his family, and as he processed his critical role in Argentina’s first World Cup title in 36 years.
“This,” Martinez said in a postgame interview, through a translator, “is beyond my dreams.”
The need to support his family
Argentina’s latest flamboyant hero grew up in Mar del Plata, a port city on Argentina’s Atlantic coast where, as Martinez said this weekend, “You’re not born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”
He was raised, instead, in a house without doors and toilets. Dinners sometimes consisted of white rice. His dad, Alberto, worked long hours as a truck driver delivering fish throughout the region. His mom, Susana, cleaned apartments, trying to provide for the young family. She’d drop off Emi and his brother, Alejandro, at the bus stop around 6:30 or 7 a.m. Or, at times, Emi would walk to school alone.
He then ventured alone into the soccer world. He left home at age 12 for Buenos Aires, to join Independiente, one of Argentina’s Cinco Grandes, its Big Five clubs. He lived out of a hotel with youth teammates. His parents, hesitant to spend hard-earned pesos on gas, could only visit him twice a month.
All of which is why he eventually left Argentina, like so many ambitious teens unfortunately must. At age 17, Arsenal invited him to England for a trial, then offered him a youth contract. His mom and brother cried and begged him: “Please don’t go.” But he’d also seen his dad crying, late at night, under the stress of unpaid and unpayable bills.
He remembered the evenings when his parents didn’t eat so that he and Alejandro could.
He knew the Arsenal contract would change his life and theirs, even if the language would be foreign and the journey arduous.
“I left when I was very young, before I got the chance to play for Independiente, because I needed to support my family financially,” he’d later explain.
So he said goodbye, and promised his mom after settling in London: “I don’t want to come back to my country with nothing. I want to make a career here.”
What he soon learned, though, was that contracts did not guarantee opportunity. From his 2010 arrival through 2019, he made just six Premier League appearances at Arsenal. The club shipped him out on “emergency loans” to Oxford United, Sheffield Wednesday and Rotherham. His English debut ended in a 3-0 defeat in the fourth division.
He hopped from those clubs to Wolverhampton Wanderers, where he suffered an injury and subsequently lost his starting spot. He went to Getafe in Spain, where he barely played, and there, at age 25, he pondered giving up. “I was that low,” he recently told The Athletic. He pushed on, and went to Reading United on loan in 2019.
And all the while, of course, he’d slipped far out of the national team picture. He watched the 2014 World Cup final at an asado, a barbecue, with friends back home in Argentina. He went with his brother in 2018 to Russia, where Argentina’s goalkeeping was calamitous.
“That's why I can and do relate to fans,” he’d later say here in Qatar, “because I'm just another Argentine.”
Martinez's big break
His first break arrived, finally, in 2020, at age 27, when Arsenal lost a goalkeeper to injury and called on him as games resumed amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He started and won the FA Cup final that year, a trophy which brought him to a different type of tears.
His exploits there earned him a transfer to Aston Villa, his current club — and the platform he needed to impress Argentina.
“It wasn't until I was 26 or 27 that Argentina saw me the way I deserved or wanted to be seen,” he said this past weekend.
In fact, ahead of last year’s Copa America, 34-year-old River Plate keeper Franco Armani remained Argentina’s No. 1. Then Armani caught COVID. Martinez stepped in for his national team debut in a June 2021 World Cup qualifier. And he never looked back.
He sustained Argentina’s breakthrough Copa America run with three saves in a semifinal shootout against Colombia. He shut out Brazil in the final, and he’d later realize that it was the first time, in his 28 years of consciousness, that he’d seen his nation, in unison, erupt into celebration. But it was nothing compared to Sunday.
Martinez came to Qatar as La Albiceleste’s undisputed starter. He spared a few moments upon arrival to reflect, he said, on “the hard work needed to get here.” Then he toggled back into character, into the free-spirited smack-talker who has won over English hearts at Aston Villa. He first popped up in a quarterfinal shootout, pushing away two Dutch penalties. Then he repeated the feat in a frantic final.
He made the stunning save on Kolo Muani at the end of extra time, then one-upped himself in the shootout. In the tensest of moments, with Messi’s legacy essentially in the palms of his — Martinez’s — hands, he danced side to side on his goal line, flapping his arms. He nearly clawed away Kylian Mbappé’s opening attempt. Then he smothered Kingsley Coman’s.
As Aurélien Tchouaméni stepped up next, Martinez grabbed the ball and naughtily rolled it to the side of the penalty box, forcing Tchouameni to break stride and rhythm to retrieve it. Tchouameni then missed. Martinez gloated.
Later, after claiming the golden glove award as the tournament’s top goalkeeper, he turned it into a prop for a lewd gesture, with hundreds of millions of people watching.
Later still, he appeared to mock Mbappé in the locker room.
He had won a World Cup for his people; for Messi, and the country they both left as teens. He had become one of the World Cup’s, and Argentina’s, most improbable heroes.
