Emiliano Martínez — Argentina's 2022 World Cup Penalty King

Emiliano Martínez made waiting look like a method.

For ten years he was a backup and a loan — Oxford, Sheffield Wednesday, Rotherham, Wolves, Getafe, Reading — then, in one compressed run, he became the keeper Argentina planned a World Cup around. The nickname that stuck was Dibu. The job that stuck was the shootout.

What he changed was simple: he treated twelve yards as a workplace you could prepare, not a raffle you had to survive. Argentina's 2021 Copa América, the 2022 Finalissima, Qatar, and the 2024 Copa still look like his gloves.

Mar del Plata, Independiente, and the long Arsenal wait

Damián Emiliano Martínez Romero was born in Mar del Plata on 2 September 1992. Independiente's youth ranks sent him to Arsenal in 2010 after a trial. A youth coach, Miguel Ángel Santoro, had already given him Dibu — after a cartoon character in the Argentine series Mi familia es un dibujo.

The senior path was slow. Emergency minutes at Oxford United in League Two on 5 May 2012. A League Cup debut for Arsenal later that year. Championship spells at Sheffield Wednesday and Rotherham. A season-long loan at Wolves cut short by a thigh injury. A La Liga loan at Getafe that produced five league games. Reading in 2019. At Arsenal he was cover for Wojciech Szczęsny, Łukasz Fabiański, David Ospina, Petr Čech, and Bernd Leno. Fifteen Premier League appearances across a decade.

The door opened because someone else went down. Leno was injured against Brighton on 20 June 2020. Martínez finished the restart as first choice. Ian Wright called him commanding. On 1 August he started the FA Cup final against Chelsea and Arsenal won their fourteenth Cup. He started the Community Shield against Liverpool on 29 August and Arsenal won on penalties. Then Mikel Arteta kept Leno. Martínez asked for the shirt or a move.

Villa, fifteen clean sheets, a first-choice job

On 16 September 2020 Aston Villa paid a fee reported at up to £20 million and handed him a four-year contract. He was twenty-eight. Dean Smith promised him the gloves.

His Premier League debut was a 1–0 home win against Sheffield United. He saved John Lundstram's penalty. He played every league minute that season and equalled Brad Friedel's club record of fifteen Premier League clean sheets. Supporters' Player of the Season. The wait had a destination: a club that wrote his name down every week.

He later signed extensions that kept him at Villa into the late 2020s and switched his club number from 1 to 23 — the Argentina shirt from the trophy summers. On 1 April 2023, his 100th Premier League appearance for the club, a 2–0 win at Chelsea, was his 34th clean sheet in those hundred games — past the mark Brad Friedel and Mark Bosnich had shared at 33. In April 2024 he saved two penalties as Villa beat Lille in a Conference League quarter-final shootout. The club story and the international story were using the same tool.

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Five weeks into the shirt

Lionel Scaloni needed a keeper when Franco Armani fell ill in 2021. Martínez debuted on 3 June, a 1–1 World Cup qualifier against Chile. Eleven days later he started the Copa América opener against the same side. He saved Arturo Vidal's penalty; Eduardo Vargas scored the rebound.

On 6 July, in the semi-final against Colombia, he saved three spot kicks. Argentina went through. The final in Rio was 1–0 against Brazil. Clean sheet. Golden Glove. He had been an international for five weeks. Argentina's twenty-eight-year Copa wait ended with a keeper most of the country had barely seen.

On 1 June 2022 he kept a clean sheet as Argentina beat Italy 3–0 at Wembley in the Finalissima. By then the question was no longer whether Dibu would start in Qatar. It was whether the shootout specialist could still decide a World Cup if the tournament asked for more than penalties.

Qatar: the save, then the shootouts

He started every match. In the quarter-final against the Netherlands he saved Virgil van Dijk and Steven Berghuis in the shootout. In the final against France, with the score 3–3, Randal Kolo Muani went through in the 123rd minute. Martínez saved it. Then came the kicks. He saved Kingsley Coman. Aurélien Tchouaméni missed. Argentina won 4–2. Golden Glove. World Cup.

The Best FIFA Men's Goalkeeper followed for 2022. The Yashin Trophy followed in 2023, then again in 2024 — a joint record with Gianluigi Donnarumma. He won The Best a second time in 2024, the first two-time winner of that award.

What travelled with him was not only the saves. It was the delays, the stares, the ball tossed aside. Hugo Lloris, who faced him in that final, later said there were things he could not do. IFAB discussed tightening the penalty laws. Asked about rule changes, Martínez said he had already saved the penalties he needed to save.

Personality as the method

Writers call it gamesmanship. Teammates call it work. The Athletic's Matt Pyzdrowski described one of the most aggressive and disruptive penalty approaches you will see. It showed up in the Premier League too: at Old Trafford in 2021 he asked Bruno Fernandes, out loud, why Cristiano Ronaldo was not taking the kick. Fernandes put it over the bar. Villa won 1–0.

Reuters, after the 2024 Copa quarter-final, put the Argentina numbers in public: of twenty-four penalties faced for the national side at that point, nine saved, three off target — opponents converting half.

The method is not magic. He studies run-ups. He talks. He uses the time the laws still give him. He stays large when the stadium shrinks to twelve yards. Critics say the theatre outruns the shot-stopping. Honest careers include the argument. His answer is the ledger: Copa 2021, Qatar, Copa 2024, and a country that now expects the shootout to be his.

The 2024 Copa in the United States was the repeat. Ecuador equalised in stoppage time of the quarter-final. Lionel Messi hit the bar from the first kick. Martínez saved from Ángel Mena and Alan Minda. Argentina went through 4–2. The final against Colombia finished 1–0 after extra time. Five clean sheets in the tournament, including that final. A third Golden Glove. Argentina had never lost a shootout with him in goal.

What to take from it

Watch the pattern. Martínez changed how late a keeper can become first choice — not a prospect rushed into a shirt, but a twenty-eight-year-old who had already lived six loans and still arrived as a number one. He changed the feel of Argentina's last line: personality as preparation, the shootout as a set piece. He framed Qatar as a tournament a backup from Mar del Plata could still decide if the nerve and the work arrived together.

Young keepers still chase the dive that looks good in a clip. He made the long wait look like craft — distribution, organisation, and the willingness to own twelve yards when the match stops being a match. Caps become a career only if someone keeps earning the next one. A World Cup becomes a country's story only if someone holds the other end until the last kick.

Emiliano Martínez gave Argentina a last line you could hear from the stands and plan around from the bench. Villa nights, Copa gloves, and a World Cup that still ends on his palms. That combination is rarer than any single save — and it is why his name sits on this list.