When the great Brian Glanville wrote Goalkeepers Are Different five decades ago, he had no way of knowing just how far Emiliano Martinez would stretch the boundaries of his concept.
It says rather a lot about the chap in Aston Villa’s goal that he is uniquely qualified to be cast as football’s most cartoonish villain and one of the game’s very best keepers. Somehow, ‘different’ doesn’t quite cover his extremities.
There is genius in Martinez, of course. The way he performed against Bayern Munich in midweek offered a reminder that was less than necessary, because we know the depths of his quality. Just as we are well aware that one side of his brain has evolved at a faster rate than the half overrun by squirrels.
Harry Kane saw Martinez’s brilliance up close on Wednesday evening, and so did Serge Gnabry and Michael Olise – great chances were met with difficult saves. Jhon Duran was the headline but Martinez was the unpassable layer between a win and a draw or worse. We said the same about the last World Cup final and we might say it again when Villa face Manchester United on Sunday.
If there is a better player in his position, then it is a conversation limited to precious few names. Alisson Becker takes it for my money. Thibaut Courtois is also in that mix and Ederson, David Raya, Unai Simon and Gianluigi Donnarumma make compelling cases.
Emiliano Martinez’s heroics helped Aston Villa beat Bayern Munich in the Champions League
He may be football’s most cartoonish villain but he is also one of the game’s very best keepers
Certainly, they have all proven themselves difference-makers to results and campaigns. But none of those guys are different in the way Martinez is.
They didn’t end last month with a two-game international ban from FIFA and nor did they start this week with a promise that probably won’t be kept. In those surreal matters, Martinez stands alone; a keeper whose ability to define huge matches is equalled by that compulsion he has to thrust his crotch against the spoils of victory.
Love moves in mysterious ways but no movement is so mysterious, so odd, as Martinez’s hips whenever a prize is within arm’s reach.
There was his romance with the Golden Glove gong at the World Cup in 2022. And indeed its equivalent at the Copa America in 2021, before he got overly familiar with the main trophy when Argentina won it again a few weeks back.
Goodness, if Aston Villa’s early Champions League form carries them to an improbable destination, two things would be true at once: Martinez will have played a key role and UEFA must surely hire snipers to protect their grand old cup.
But let’s return to that promise he distributed via social media on Monday. Martinez says his thrusting days are over. He apologises. He said the purpose of his celebration is ‘to make many kids smile’, and he went on to add: ‘It was never my intention to disrespect anyone, nor did I understand that a gesture well received by people was offensive, but I will try not to offend anyone anymore.’
He made similar assurances after the World Cup, when his podium moment prompted Patrick Vieira to get quite cross. Martinez, he said, had ‘taken away a little of what Argentina achieved’. It wasn’t an isolated view.
Martinez’s hip thrust while holding his World Cup Golden Glove in 2022 sparked controversy
But he performed a similar gesture while holding a replica of the Copa America gong this year
Martinez was crass and he was pummelled for it. Rightly so. But that is his way and humour – often the genius brings the squirrels to work and there’s no reasoning with squirrels.
On Argentina’s most recent Copa America title last month, so just prior to his rendezvous with the trophy, he slapped a camera and FIFA didn’t much like that either.
Nor did folk respond with universal approval when he bumped his crotch against Kylian Mbappe’s face ahead of a penalty in the World Cup final and then cradled a doll, masked with a picture of the same player’s face, in the bus parade.
That’s what Martinez does – he is childish, a man of 32 without a filter. A master of goalkeeping and gamesmanship. A serial irritant who guards as many lines as he crosses. He riles, he provokes. He is, above all, different.
And that is welcome in the most peculiar way. Now more than ever, maybe.
We live in football’s petri-dish era, its age of pompous sanctimony, when the curation of perfection goes to horribly sanitised places. We want angels and we slam those with dirty wings, but sport needs its rogues.
A fetish for trophies might be a nudge too far in a dopey direction, but at the very least Martinez is flavour. He is the bonkers, daft and human face of a game that is gravitating towards robots and the lines of VAR.
Martinez is a master of goalkeeping and gamesmanship, a man of 32 without a filter
He is a splash of colour and the human face of a game gravitating towards robots and VAR
He is a splash of colour when so many other personalities are stifled and boring; the kind of guy who needs reminding at yearly intervals that rubbing his crotch on a trophy in front of a camera is inappropriate. But he is a free spirit and that has tremendous value.
Speaking to those in and around Aston Villa, they would prefer to highlight the other qualities, which are the ones that win matches.
They also talk about a man whose commitment to his craft is unsurpassed and proof is in the output – to witness his ascent from the fringes of Arsenal to World Cup winner is to conclude his signing for £17million in 2020 was among the best deals in the past decade of the Premier League. He worked fiendishly hard to make it so.
After the Bayern win, Martinez tapped into that by saying: ‘I am crazy about continuing to grow, becoming the best. I have no ceiling, I want to continue growing.’
He might have stopped that speech after three words and no one would have challenged his assessment. We might also wonder if his commitment to growth will lead to conformity at the close of a week when both aspects of his character were put on trial.
But let’s hope the squirrels retain some voting rights within his inner monologues. Goalkeepers are meant to be different.
McCarthy should have stayed quiet
There’s nothing like a good pile-on and nowhere does a pile-on quite like Manchester United. It must hard for Erik ten Hag to keep track of all the boots that have found their way into his ribs in these apocalyptic days.
But he may have been surprised by the kicking he sustained from Benni McCarthy, whose two-year tenure as United’s attacking coach ended in the summer.
Some of what McCarthy said was piercingly accurate – passion matters and Ten Hag shows little. We could also buy into the South African’s criticisms when he claimed certain players didn’t apply themselves in training, but that rings up a memory of McCarthy being fined £200,000 at West Ham in 2010 for being almost two stones overweight.
He might not have passed the ‘show us your medals’ test on that one, and the same could be said on his wider record coaching those forwards at United. In McCarthy’s two seasons, United scored 58 and 57 league goals. For context, in 11 post-Ferguson campaigns those tallies rank seventh and joint-eighth, so maybe McCarthy should have kept his counsel.
That’s not how a pile-on works, of course. When a manager is down, you go for him. But Ten Hag didn’t act alone.
Benni McCarthy aimed a kick at Erik ten Hag’s ribs by declaring the Dutchman lacked passion
But McCarthy should have kept his counsel because Ten Hag’s failures were not his alone
Sancho leaves Ten Hag red-faced
Cole Palmer is casting a brilliant and wide shadow in what has been exceptional start to the season for Chelsea. In the shade, but not lost among it all, is Jadon Sancho.
This time last year he was banished from Manchester United’s first-team lunches and today he has three assists in three games at Chelsea and ripped holes in both West Ham and Brighton. He has the best dribbling stats in the league and going into Sunday’s fixture with Nottingham Forest is looking like the winger we remember.
The one from before his thoughts exploded into a misguided social media post. It is strangely ironic that even in his absence he is making Erik ten Hag look bad.