More lows than highs: Emiliano Martínez’s year at Palmeiras revisited

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·17 dicembre 2025

More lows than highs: Emiliano Martínez’s year at Palmeiras revisited

Palmeiras finished 2025 with uncertainties among the defensive midfielders. Emiliano Martinez, signed for 2025, and Aníbal Moreno, with the team since 2024, ended the year as substitutes and possible transfer candidates. In the Libertadores final, both were on the bench and the starter was defender Bruno Fuchs, who was improvised in the position.

With the plan to seek four reinforcements for 2026, including a defensive midfielder, Verdão is expected to negotiate at least one of the two players in that position. Despite Aníbal’s mistakes at crucial moments of the season, a departure of Emiliano is not ruled out.

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The Uruguayan experienced more lows than highs and is likely to be made available on the market at the end of this year. He played 48 games in 2025, scoring one goal – in the victory over Corinthians in the Brazilian Championship.

The Uruguayan was even criticized by Abel after the 3-0 defeat to LDU in the first leg of the Libertadores semifinal. On that occasion, Emiliano was chosen to replace Aníbal Moreno and was at fault for two of the three goals. Recall the coach’s comments:

– Emiliano’s mission was to mark the player who scored the two goals. Murilo, I understood, was for duels, more physical. I believe he has that ability. There were three normal substitutions. – In my still very heated opinion, there’s one thing: I warned my players that this team competes a lot and at home is very strong. I think that was an aspect that, in the first half, we didn’t understand in the aggressive and intense way our opponents came at us – he concluded.

Career at Palmeiras

The 25-year-old player signed with Palmeiras on a contract valid until December 31, 2029. He was with Midtjylland, from Denmark. Verdão paid 7.5 million dollars, which is about R$44 million at the current exchange rate, plus bonuses for 75% of the athlete’s rights.

Trained in the youth ranks of Nacional-URU, Martínez was champion of the U-20 Libertadores in 2018 with the Montevideo (URU) club and debuted for the senior team the following year. Over three seasons, he contributed to winning the Uruguayan Championship in 2019 and 2020 and the Uruguayan Supercup in 2021. He also played for Red Bull Bragantino in Brazil between 2021 and 2022.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.