Dibu Martínez, the hero who became a beast waiting on the substitute bench

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Emiliano Martinez he lost his name on his way to idolatry. He now he’s just the one Back.

The biographical data, the course, are already known by almost everyone, given the magnitude of the character; is material googleable and there is not much more to say about it. The inferiors of Independentthe guardianship of that hero of the bow (and decency) that is Pepe Santorothe youth teams, moving to England at the age of 16, the long wait from his time at Arsenal, the fleeting loans to teams from other divisions, the little memorable spell at Getafe, the return to Arsenal and the few participations, Aston Villa, the National Team.

Your personality was forged in early uprooting (from Mar del Plata to Avellaneda, from Argentina to England) and in solitude. He went to English football with one goal, one obsession: to succeed. At some point in those ten years in which he could not establish himself, in which he always an archer with more name than him appeared to be a starter, doubts eroded his confidence. Perhaps, he must have thought, he wasn’t as good as he thought. Neither in the Championship teams -the English second division- nor in the Spanish Getafe he managed to establish himself: there they also put him as a substitute. However, someone at Arsenal still believed in him.

They didn’t call him Dibu, they didn’t even know that he had been named that way because of his resemblance to the animated character from My Family is a Drawing: the freckles, the reddish hair, the expansive and unruly personality.

had doubts, sought professional help, but always (even against the evidence) continued to trust him. When she finally had the chance of her she didn’t miss it. The simultaneous injuries to the goalkeepers in front of him – the last one was that of the German Bernd Leno – gave him the chance, in the midst of a pandemic, to start for a while at Arsenal for the first time since he arrived. El Dibu waited a decade for that moment.

The bench of substitutes can drive a goalkeeper crazy: training, changing each game, warming up, not knowing whether or not to feel adrenaline before a game, watching the matches hoping in each clash that your teammate gets injured or saves badly to have a chance. And repeat that routine week after week for years, while the gall of frustration and bad desire erodes him from the inside.

If you don’t drive him crazy, you can do something worse: make him bourgeois, turn him into a goal clerk, make him lower the intensity of training, lose interest. And there is also a third possibility: the bench of substitutes can feed a beastit can be the fuel that makes the goalkeeper always attentive because he knows that when the opportunity presents itself he must take advantage of it, that it will be only one, that he must be noticed.

And that’s what Dibu did when Leno got injured. He was key to obtaining the FA Cup and kept an unbeaten arc in the Premier League matches that he had to play. Aston Villa noticed him and paid 20 million dollars, the highest figure paid by an Argentine goalkeeper in the history. At Aston Villa he established himself as a starter. He no longer left and for the first time he played an entire season at the age of 28.

Scaloni called him and once again, the fortune that had eluded him for so long helped him. Armani had the longest Covid in history and Dibu started the Copa América as a starter.

Again, once it was in the arch, it didn’t come out again. Moral: those who have a great appetite, those who are hungry behind, those who are voracious, those opportunities do not escape them. Look how I eat you. The penalties, ownership, the Copa América, the hatred of the rivals, the respect and affection of the teammates.

Dibu Martínez cut short in the Selection, from the first day, as if the goal had always been his.

In the World Cup it was decisive as few archers in modern history of the competition. He did not have too many interventions but they were at the opportune moments and of high complexity. Perhaps only Fillol has been more influential in an Argentine world title. The free kick against Mexico when the game was 0-0, the one-on-one at the last minute against the Australian striker, the two penalties against the Dutch, the impossible cover to Kolo Muani in minute 123 of the Final –on the day the book of that intervention is written, the title should be “The loot left that saved a country from disintegration”, the Dibu as the anti Jim Jones-, the penalty saved by Koman.

Once the team recovered from the defeat in the first game, the goalkeeper He spoke publicly about his personal psychologist, from the talks with him that helped to focus before each game. The World Cup won magnifies every statement. The Dibu psychologist was hashtag (and I assume you must have a patient waiting list of over a year).

However, Martínez has been working with him for several years. He turned to the professional when he felt that not playing was causing him to lose focus, that he was drifting. That and the birth of his first daughter gave her the balance she lacked.

To those who listen to their dialogues with the forwards before a penalty kick -a conduct that FIFA is currently reviewing and could even penalize-, to those who see their little dances after stopping a shot from twelve steps or, worse still, to those who who observe that propensity for lewd gestures Every time (in every tournament played for the National Team so far) that he receives an award for individual work, it may seem strange and even implausible to read that Dibu Martínez shows great balance in goal.

He comes out on time, picks up difficult crosses with serenity, waits until the last moment on penalties (something essential today), looks at the striker who faces him without being carried away by momentum, recovers with speed from a goal against. That the media noise, his snubs at rivals and his habit of using prizes as sex toys do not cover up his technical conditions as an archer.

Leg strength, great passing game, personality, influence over teammates and rivals, and reaction and timingreducing the shooting angle and putting your reflexes into play, in hand to hand. It is something unusual in these times in which the archers believe that it is enough to submit to the striker by remaining still before his definition.

Nobody has any doubts that he is already more than an archer. In his dreams in the Independiente pension or in the first years in England there could be a place to imagine lifting the World Cup. That is what all the players in the world dream of, even if they lack the necessary talent. What he could never have imagined is that he would be a popular idol and a sex symbol. Each gesture, each look, each publication on the networks, each statement provokes waves of passion that exceed football.

The precedent in Argentine soccer of a similar case is 32 years old or eight World Cups away: there was a boom resembling Sergio Goycochea and the penalties of Italy 90. But at that time there were no social networks that exponentially multiplied the effects, and in Italy there was no cup either.

Dibu Martinez already entered the story. Hated by rivals, loved by the (Argentine) public and, something no less, by his teammates. Resenbrink Stick prescribed. The new generations now have their own icon of suffering and salvation: the cover of Dibu to Kolo Muani in the 123rd minute of the greatest Final in history. That left booty (another one) that made us so happy.

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