The unseen Argentina gesture inspiring Emi Martinez at World Cup | OneFootball

It took an injury to set Emiliano Martinez on the path from being a perennial deputy to a World Cup winner. Another imperilled his chances of becoming the first goalkeeper since Gilmar in 1962 to start two World Cup final wins.

Martinez’s career seemed first to stall, then to accelerate at dizzying speed. Approaching his 28th birthday, he had played fewer than 100 senior games and had four different loan spells in the Championship. When Bernd Leno was injured against Brighton, however, he was propelled into the Arsenal team. A month later, he had won the FA Cup.

Two months after that, he joined Aston Villa. The following summer came his Argentina debut. A month later, they won the Copa America for the first time in 28 years. The following year, they won the World Cup for the first time in 36.

Martinez, the man borrowed by Oxford, Sheffield Wednesday, Rotherham, Wolves, Getafe and Reading, became a pillar of the most successful team ever. Until his latest trophy came with a dose of pain. Martinez broke a finger in the warm-up before Aston Villa’s Europa League final defeat of Freiburg.

Their first continental silverware in 44 years was another historic achievement for him, but it threatened his defence of the World Cup. The doctors were united in their verdict. “I knew my hand was going to be hurting,” said Martinez, after ignoring medical advice. “I tried to avoid going through surgery and consulted a great deal of hand specialists in England and the States and they told me I had to go through surgery.”

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Emiliano Martinez of Argentina prepares for warm ups (Getty)

Lionel Scaloni offered much-needed support, assuaging his concerns he would be left out. “My coach sent me a message, saying: ‘I don’t mind about your condition, you will be in the team’,” Martinez recalled. “And that is more important to me than saving a penalty.”

A player who can be defined my his bravado nevertheless felt doubts. “After winning a final with a broken finger, you are told you have to undergo surgery and will miss the whole group stage, you start questioning yourself,” he said. “Two days before the first match, I wasn’t feeling good.”

Martinez could not even join in training sessions with the team. “I love training,” he lamented. After Argentina’s 3-2 win over Egypt in the last 16, he was finally permitted to get on the training ground with the rest of the squad.

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Emiliano Martinez of Argentina celebrates against England (Getty)

A World Cup final comes between teams with very different defensive records. Spain’s Unai Simon has only conceded one goal in the World Cup. Martinez has let in six during the knockout stages alone, with Cape Verde and Egypt each scoring twice, Switzerland and England once apiece.

And yet, he said: “I am enjoying this World Cup much more than the one in Qatar.” Perhaps that comes in part from the comfort of knowing he has already won a World Cup. But 2022 was fraught for other reasons. “I suffered a lot after the game against Saudi Arabia,” Martinez said. Argentina opened their campaign with a defeat, Saudi Arabia scoring from both shots on target. He felt he made too few saves in the early games.

But a penalty expert came into his own in the quarter-final shootout against the Netherlands, saving from Virgil van Dijk and Steven Berghuis. Martinez’s gamesmanship became a feature, but helped Argentina in the final as well, when he denied France’s Kingsley Coman in the shootout.

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Emiliano Martinez could become a two-time world champion on Sunday (PA)

Still more famous, and celebrated, however, was his save from Randal Kolo Muani, deep into extra time. “In that final we were totally superior until they got that penalty and then I conceded three goals and when you do that you are usually out and I just intervened in the 123rd minute,” he remembered. Martinez’s somewhat tasteless celebrations with the Golden Glove after that World Cup also stick in the mind: his transformation from unknown understudy to controversial character continued.

He argued he has never changed. “I can concede one, two, three goals and in the next moment I am the same ‘Dibu’ who used to play in the Mar del Plata neighbourhood,” he said, citing his hometown. He has become part of the world’s most successful international team. He might have joined its biggest club.

He is routinely introduced at Villa Park as “the world’s No 1”, though, when Manchester United wanted a goalkeeper last summer, Martinez was, to his frustration, their second choice as they signed Senne Lammens instead.

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Lionel Messi, Emiliano Martinez and Cristian Romero during the national anthem (Getty)

Which may have reflected the sense that, while Martinez has made brilliant saves for Villa, he has been more consistently excellent for his country than his club. While he left Argentina at 17, his patriotism has been a constant.

“I have always been a national team fan,” he said. “I cried as a child when the German goalkeeper saved a penalty kick,” he said, recalling Jens Lehmann’s stops from Roberto Ayala and Esteban Cambiasso in the 2006 quarter-final shootout.

Sixteen years later, Martinez would be the goalkeeper to star in shootouts. “I feel like crying thinking about what we have achieved,” he said. There is the possibility the penalty specialist will bring tears to Spanish eyes in New York.