Finally the End to the Martinez Juventus Links
Emiliano Martínez’s representative has told Sky Sports News exactly what Villa’s own director of football operations said weeks earlier: the goalkeeper is happy, has never asked to leave, and any move to Juventus or Inter Milan will only happen on Villa’s terms, not theirs.
Gustavo Goñi, of agency Universal TwentyTwo, put it plainly. Martínez did not push to leave last summer when Manchester United circled, and he has not pushed this summer either. Big clubs will always come calling for one of the best goalkeepers in the world, Goñi said, but Martínez would only leave with Villa’s blessing, under a deal that suits everyone.
Rinse and Repeat
That is, word for word in substance, what Damian Vidagany already said on the record three weeks earlier: “Martínez will STAY with us, we have no intention of letting him leave this summer.”
Villa’s valuation sat at around £10-15m, while Juventus never seemed to want to entertain such a figure, instead they were seemingly trying to structure a deal around the play of doing Villa a favour in terms of SCR.
None of which has stopped this running for three months. Fabrizio Romano has been seen to be carrying Juventus’s interest, Villa’s rejections, agents “told to put pressure” on the club, and now Villa’s side of the ledger again, on repeat, since June. At some point a saga becomes less about the transfer and more about how many times one outlet can make it appear as a continuous saga (potentially for engagement or on instruction).
Sawiris Curtain Call
The one genuinely new detail in SkySport’s news flash was who Goñi chose to thank. He did not just credit Villa. He named Villa’s co-owner Nassef Sawiris specifically, praising the “support and guidance” of Villa’s owner. That is not the kind of line an agent includes by accident.
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Sawiris has a track record of personally stepping in on major calls: he set Villa’s anchor price against Arsenal in the Morgan Rogers sale, and had the final say on where that one landed ultimately with Chelsea. It suggests a man happy to let the club issue statements on the ordinary business, but who springs into action himself once a marquee player is actually at stake. An agent naming him directly, unprompted, in a routine “my client is happy” quote reads like more than good manners. It reads like a hint at who actually ended this conversation.
Martínez is 33, played the Europa League final on a broken finger, and is exactly the kind of goalkeeper a Champions League squad does not sell into a market with no genuine buyer above its own valuation.
If Sawiris really is the one drawing the line personally, then, that should be that. No more tweets please, Mr Romano.
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If you want to sign one of the best strikers in the world it will cost you 100illion. Same with midfielders so, a ridiculous ten million quid for the best keeper in the world villa are having their pants ripped off