Sergio Aguero has revealed how he and his former Argentina teammates knew Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez was a “good, funny madman” from the day he turned up at training.
Martínez has established himself as Argentina’s number one over the last couple of years, having starred at Aston Villa since joining them in a €17.4m deal in 2020.
He arrived at Villa Park following a superb six months with the Gunners in which he had finally been given his chance to shine after Bernd Leno was ruled out with an injury.
He had been with Arsenal since a move from Independiente’s U20 side in 2010 but was never truly given a chance at the Emirates, instead spending most of his ten years there out on various loan deals.
He finally grasped his opportunity and has continued to do so since, shining at Aston Villa and then for Argentina, for whom he is the undisputed number one.
He has already played a key role in them winning the Copa America last year and is playing a similarly important part in their run to the World Cup semi-finals in Qatar.
A key part of his success has been his bold, in your face style, something he uses to get into opponents’ minds and has seen him come in for criticism on more than one occasion.
It seems he doesn’t just use it on his opponents, though, as Aguero detailed how he was also the same with his Argentina teammates.
“What surprised us most about Dibu is that normally goalkeepers train separately and are in their own world, and each one has his own goalkeeper’s rule”, he told Star +, relayed by El Destape.
“It’s difficult to know what a goalkeeper is like, but with Dibu we realised as soon as he arrived that he was a madman, like in the time of Mono (Germán) Burgos. A good, funny madman.
“He used to tackle, and he’d shout at you, he’d tell you things all the time. He’d shout ‘come on, kick me, take it’ in the shorthanded area. We used to say ‘what a madman, he’s just arrived…’
“That’s when we realised that he had confidence in him. But all that we saw, then he showed it in the games. He knows he’s going and, if he has to go out for a certain ball, he knows he’s going to do it.
“If he misses, he doesn’t care, he goes…. He does what he feels. Some people fall at the slightest mistake, and this one didn’t.”
