Emiliano Martínez: A Goalkeeper's Painful Journey
Emiliano Martínez plays football with a hand that will never be whole again. He knows it. Doctors have told him. The mirror confirms it every morning.
He has chosen to live with it anyway.
The Chelsea and Argentina goalkeeper has laid bare the true cost of that choice, revealing that a brutal finger injury suffered earlier this year has left permanent damage, reshaped his career, and still sends pain shooting through his hand every time he pulls on a glove.
A broken finger, a broken plan
The injury came in May, in the most mundane and cruel of ways: during the warm-up for Aston Villa’s Europa League final against Freiburg. One moment routine handling, the next a broken and dislocated finger. The scans that followed did more than confirm the damage; they threatened to rip up his entire year.
At 34, with Argentina preparing to defend their World Cup crown, Martínez knew what surgery meant: time out, tournament gone, his place in Lionel Scaloni’s plans suddenly in jeopardy. The keeper who had become a symbol of Argentina’s defiance stared at the images and saw, in his own words, devastation.
He turned surgery down.
Instead, he gambled on pain. On injections. On tape and trust. Backed by Scaloni, Martínez agreed to play on with a customised Adidas glove, his finger swaddled in heavy strapping that protected the bone but robbed him of his natural grip. For a goalkeeper, that is like asking a pianist to play with mittens.
He did it anyway.
‘Every single night I was crying’
The true extent of that sacrifice has only now emerged. Speaking to Argentine journalist Gastón Edul on YouTube, Martínez described a preparation process that bordered on the surreal.
"The day before Algeria I was diving with one arm, diving like a zombie," he said. "If I put my hand down I was seeing stars. It was brutal. Every single night I was crying because my finger looked like a sausage."
Training sessions were re-written around his pain threshold. He dived differently. He landed differently. He lived with the constant fear that one mistimed fall or one awkward save would snap the finger again.
It still never healed properly.
"It will never go back to how it was," he admitted. "I am still playing with pain. But these are the risks you take for the national team, I’d do it again."
That line tells you everything about his hierarchy of priorities. Country first. Career second. Comfort nowhere on the list.
The transfer that vanished on an X-ray
The consequences were not limited to the national team.
When Martínez reported for medical checks ahead of a proposed move to Juventus in the summer, the finger told its own story. The scans showed what he had been trying to manage: the break had gone again.
"I got an x-ray and it was broken again," he revealed. "That is when a transfer to a club fell through because of the finger."
A move to one of Italy’s giants evaporated under the harsh light of medical reality. For most players, that would be the defining twist of the summer. For Martínez, it was only part of the fallout.
With Juventus out of the picture, Chelsea stepped in and paid £7.5 million to bring him to Stamford Bridge. They did so fully aware of the risks, fully aware that at some point a surgeon’s knife will be unavoidable.
"They said it was possible for me to play like that, that I needed surgery, but Chelsea didn't, they didn't care," Martínez said. "One day I will need surgery."
For now, club and player have chosen the same path he took with Argentina: manage the pain, manage the risk, and squeeze as many games as possible out of a damaged hand.
A new club, another injury
Yet the finger is not the reason he is currently out of the Chelsea team.
In west London, Martínez is recovering from a different kind of trauma. A broken jaw, suffered earlier this month in Chelsea’s win over Everton, has halted his start at his new club before it could truly gather momentum.
The irony is stark. A man who has learned to live with a chronically painful hand now finds himself sidelined by a separate, acute injury. While his jaw heals, the finger remains a constant, a quiet throb in the background, a reminder that even full fitness will never really be full.
His immediate future is clear enough: rehabilitation, protective work, a gradual return to contact, then a fight to reclaim his place in Mauricio Pochettino’s starting XI. The longer view is more complicated.
When Martínez does walk back out at Stamford Bridge, he will do so with a jaw that has healed and a finger that never truly will. The question is not whether he can play through the pain. He has already proved that beyond doubt.
The real question now is how far that damaged hand can carry him in the unforgiving spotlight of the Premier League – and how long he is willing to let pain define the way he plays.
