Emiliano Martínez: From Farewell Tears to Europa League Final
Emiliano Martínez wipes away any doubt as easily as he swats away penalties. A year ago, he stood on the Villa Park pitch in tears, waving goodbye after the final game of the 2024-25 season against Tottenham, convinced his time at Aston Villa was coming to an end.
Now he stands one match from a European crown.
On Wednesday in Istanbul, the 33-year-old World Cup winner will walk out for a Europa League final against Freiburg, with the chance to deliver Villa’s first major trophy in 30 years. The keeper who almost left has instead nailed his colours to the claret and blue mast.
From farewell tears to a European final
Martínez joined Villa in September 2020 and has grown into one of the club’s defining modern figures. The emotional goodbye last year felt like a full stop. It turned out to be a comma.
He has since chosen to stay, and he made clear just how deep that decision runs.
“I said goodbye and I cried when I left my family from Argentina to England, and I'm still with family,” he said, drawing a line between home and the club that has become one.
Football, he knows, rarely stands still. “Sometimes football can change, managers come and go. It doesn’t mean I don’t have full respect and love for the club. I had a commitment with Aston Villa, I am a World Cup winner with Aston Villa and I won two golden gloves.
“I will always and forever love this club no matter what. Some day I’ll retire and someone else will go between the sticks.”
This is not a man passing through. It is a goalkeeper tying his legacy to a club’s resurgence.
Emery, the architect, and a squad that believes
If Martínez is the heartbeat, Unai Emery is the architect. The keeper’s admiration for his manager is unambiguous.
“We have a top coach – we don’t wish [to have] anyone else on the bench apart from him leading us to a European final,” he said.
That belief has carried Villa from relegation fears not so long ago to the brink of continental glory. The dressing room feels it too.
“When we stick together and fight together we can beat anybody,” Martínez added. “I am really proud to stay and I made the right choice.”
The right choice. The right moment. Now they must prove it on the biggest stage they’ve seen in a generation.
Martínez and the drama of penalties
For all his talk of unity and commitment, there is another side to Martínez that could yet define the night in Istanbul: the penalty specialist, the master of the shoot-out.
He would rather avoid it. Of course he would. But if it comes, he will embrace it.
“I always have shoot-outs in my mind. It’s something I really enjoy, it’s like different competition, I don’t know how to explain it,” he said.
He would prefer a more straightforward path. “Hopefully ‘Ginny’ (John McGinn) scores two goals and we finish in 90 minutes but if not I prepared and back myself every day of the week in shoot-outs.”
If the final goes the distance, few goalkeepers in world football relish that stage quite like him.
McGinn’s proudest walk
If Martínez’s journey is one of almost leaving, John McGinn’s is one of climbing. The captain has lived almost every version of Aston Villa over the past six years.
He arrived in 2018, helped drag the club out of the Championship, and has been central to their rise back into the European elite. Now, at 31, with 10 goals across all competitions this season, he leads them into a European final.
Asked if this will be the proudest moment of his career, he did not hesitate.
“I would say so, yeah. It has been a brilliant journey, full of ups and downs, close moments, very close to going back to the Championship,” he admitted.
Those scars matter. They shape how this night feels.
“It fills me with pride as to where the club is now and it also fills me with pride as to where this club could go, like the manager has touched upon, this isn’t something we want to come here, celebrate and have a fanfare, we want to be focused on this match.
“We know how difficult it is to get to a final.
“But if you ask me on a personal level, throughout the years I have been here, definitely this is the proudest moment as captain here.”
From the brink of dropping back into the second tier to the edge of Europe, McGinn will lead out a club that has rediscovered its ambition, behind a goalkeeper who chose to stay and a manager who has changed everything.
Now comes the only question that matters: can Aston Villa turn this long, winding journey into a night that defines an era?
