Lisandro Martinez is Man United’s fifth World Cup winner and his conduct on and off the pitch at the tournament has been exemplary.
For all the ‘Argentina’ chanting and flag-bearing from Manchester United supporters, some in the Stretford End waited to specifically berate a downtrodden Emiliano Martinez after the FA Cupthird round win in January.
Only three months earlier, Martinez had snidely celebrated Bruno Fernandes’s airborne penalty at that same end by goading the massed Reds. On an evening Steven Gerrard set a new record for ‘You Scouse b—–d’s, some had not forgotten Martinez.
Martinez is a flimsy ‘keeper in open play but you do not want him staring at you from 12 yards. That ultimately decided an oscillating World Cup final.
To those United supporters chided by Martinez, his antics at the World Cup came as no surprise. In the aftermath of Argentina’s quarter-final shootout win over the Netherlands, a topless Martinez bragged to a Dutchman off camera he had “f—-d you twice” and dubbed them puto – the male term for ‘whore’.
In the final, he chucked the ball away from Aurelien Tchouameni as he approached the penalty spot. Tchouameni missed. Martinez danced.
He received the Golden Glove and made a lewd gesture with the trophy. In the dressing room, Martinez was filmed pausing the Argentina conga to observe a “minute’s silence for Mbappe”.
An Aston Villa fan who carped Fernandes was a ‘creep’ for winning a penalty against Uruguay gushed about the ‘beautiful’ Martinez on Sunday. Martinez is as classless as Lionel Messi is class.
December 18 2022 will forever be remembered as Messi’s zenith, the moment he truly emulated Diego Maradona. Argentina have won the Copa America and the World Cup since Maradona’s passing in November 2020 and the sea of blue and white in Buenos Aires truly resembled crashing crests of a wave.
Messi’s utopia should overshadow Argentina’s charmlessness. Their derogatory behaviour towards Louis van Gaal, a legendary coach who recovered from prostate cancer to lead the Netherlands in Qatar, was as deplorable as their goalkeeper. The retired Sergio Aguero was a more shameless celebrator than John Terry.
Had the England manager described Argentina as “animals”, as Alf Ramsey infamously did in 1966, these Argentinians would have taken it as a compliment. Their animalistic performance subdued France until Nicolas Otamendi’s lapse in the 79th minute.
