Good-Bad boy Emiliano Martinez: Trucker’s son who left home because his father couldn’t pay bills

Emiliano Martinez, the Argentina goal-keeper famous for his World Cup winning penalty saves and endlessly mocking French super star Kylian Mbappe, is standing on a stage at his hometown Mar del Plata, a coastal province outside Buenos Aires. It’s a home-coming for the man whose on and off field actions made him viral content.
Thousands have flocked to glimpse and celebrate his world cup triumph. At their prompting, Martinez begins to do the funny dance he did after stopping France’s Aurelien Tchouameni: the shoulders sway, a ballsy expression locks in on his face. The crowd roared their approval.
Now Martinez is unstoppable. He speaks about that penalty; how he indulged in gamesmanship, how he talked to Tchouameni, and how he threw away the ball before the penalty shot. “In penalties I become strong, I know that the rivals respect me. I tried to play him mentally, throwing the ball away (the fans roar at the gesture), talking to him. And he threw it outside, he s**t all over it …” he laughs, crowd go wild.
Argentina’s Emiliano Martinez reacts after Argentina is conceded a penalty. (Reuters)
Then comes a moment of gratitude when he speaks about Lionel Messi. “I sent him a message saying: ‘Thank you very much for giving me the World Cup’ . He told me the same thing. So it ‘s something incredible that the best player respects you ”. He also showed the Golden Glove award that he got at the world cup to the people. It couldn’t be confirmed whether he did the accompanying gesture, though.
Immediately after the world cup game, he went to console Mbappe on the field. In the locker room, he would sing “a minute’s silence for Mbappe who is dead” and later in Buenos Aires celebrations, he would prop up a ba doll with Mbappe’s picture on it. It hasn’t gone well among certain sections of fans. Back home in Argentina, he is of course a hero. His journey to this public adulation has been an inspiring tale.
The family of Martinez’s didn’t have much to get along with. The father would drive a truck, transporting goods from ships to the factories. His mother would clean homes. They lived in a small house.
Argentina’s Paulo Dybala, right, and goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez react after winning the World Cup final soccer match between Argentina and France at the Lusail Stadium in Lusail, Qatar, Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022. Argentina won 4-2 in a penalty shootout after the match ended tied 3-3. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
“My brother and I would sleep in the kitchen, and my mom and dad in the other room. There was no toilet,” he says in a Graham Hunter’s podcast.
Martinez cues up a moment from his childhood, to a day when he and his brother sat to have dinner. “There wasn’t much rice. My mom said, ‘your dad and I aren’t hungry, you brothers eat’. I was old enough to understand what was going on.” It burnt into his psyche the will to transform his parents’ life through football.
“From where I come from, kids could go to drugs. Football saves you from all that. No drugs, nightclubs.” From the age of 8 to 13, he would train fanatically in a public park. They would walk 5-6 kilometres to even catch a bus to school. One day he remembers being sick at school and his father picking him early.
“He took me in his truck to work and there was a hole in the ceiling. And rain came in,” Martinez says. More internal fodder to change lives.
“That people can make it from nothing. No excuses. Now, my brother sells fish to many countries, we have a construction company … The reason I am the person I am today is because of my mum and dad; how hard they worked to get a roof over our head,” Martinez says.
In England, he’s known as Emi Martínez but in Argentina his nickname is Dibu as there is a freckle-faced television character Dibu in Argentina. He had freckles and the kids would call him Dibu.

When as a kid he went to Buenos Aires to play for a club, his father was “struggling to pay petrol to come see me. I used to borrow money from friends to take a bus to go 5 hours to see them. I am proud of how far I have come.”
When things turned serious with football, and the moment to choose to leave his family came, Martinez says he couldn’t do it. He was 17 and Arsenal had come calling. “There was no way I was going to leave my family. I watched my brother and mother crying, asking me to not go,” he tells a video Arsenal. That’s when the image of his father crying came to his mind; father would cry in the nights because he was unable to pay the bills.
“At the moment, I had to be brave because I said “yes” to them.”
“ I didn’t sign because it was some big club, but with the signing amount I knew I could buy a car for my father. That’s why I signed up … My father was so proud. All he wanted was to have a roof over my brother and my head. That’s it. That was his purpose in life. To have a roof. Imagine. But we were all happy. That’s what I want to teach my kids. To appreciate life.”