The world champion goalkeeper recalled how his father worked twelve hours at the port to pay his school fees and feed his family.
River rejected him. Boca did too. He was only 10 years old and did not even have money to buy himself a pair of football boots, but something in Emiliano Martínez did not break. He was born in Mar del Plata in 1992, the son of a port worker and a maid who “worked themselves to the bone so that he and his brother could have a future”.
At 13, Independiente gave him the opportunity that no one else wanted to give him. He moved into the club’s residence in Villa Domínico, surrounded by a neighborhood where temptations were plentiful. While others went out partying, he trained alone, practicing jumping over a gym hurdle. “That was already my mindset”, he said.
Today he is the goalkeeper for the world champion national team and one of the most expensive transfers for an Argentine goalkeeper, after signing for Aston Villa. But he sums it up differently: “I’m one of those who bangs his head against the wall when things don’t go well”. Success, for Dibu, has always had the same price: suffering first.
