Emiliano Martínez: The Goalkeeper Playing Through Permanent Injury

Emiliano Martínez plays football with a hand that will never be whole again. He knows it. Doctors have told him. The mirror tells him every morning.

He has chosen to live with it.

The Chelsea and Argentina goalkeeper has revealed the true extent of the finger injury that has reshaped his career, admitting the damage is permanent and the pain still walks out onto the pitch with him every time he plays.

The night the scans changed everything

The story starts in May, in the warm-up for Aston Villa’s Europa League final against Freiburg. Martínez broke and dislocated a finger in the build-up to the game, an injury serious enough to threaten his place in Argentina’s World Cup title defence.

The scans crushed him.

For a 34-year-old goalkeeper at the peak of his international career, the diagnosis was brutal. Surgery would fix the finger, but it would also rule him out of the tournament. No middle ground. No clever workaround. Just a choice: body or country.

Martínez chose Argentina.

With the backing of national team coach Lionel Scaloni, he turned down the operation and decided to play through the pain. Adidas built him a customised glove, heavy with strapping and protection. It kept the finger together, but it also robbed him of the most basic tool of his trade – the ability to properly grip the ball.

He played on anyway.

‘Every single night I was crying’

Speaking on Gaston Edul’s YouTube channel, Martínez laid bare how dark those weeks became.

Training sessions turned into survival drills.

"The day before Algeria I was diving with one arm, diving like a zombie," he said. If he put his damaged hand down, the pain exploded. "I was seeing stars. It was brutal. Every single night I was crying because my finger looked like a sausage."

This was not the usual language of footballers brushing off knocks. This was a man admitting that a World Cup defence came at a cost he still pays every day.

He changed how he trained. He altered how he fell. He dived differently. Every movement was calculated to protect a finger that refused to heal properly.

And yet, he never wavered in his reasoning.

"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."

No regret. Just acceptance.

The transfer that died on an X-ray table

The consequences of that decision did not end with the final whistle of Argentina’s games.

In the summer, a move to Juventus advanced far enough for medical checks to be carried out. On the table, under the scanner, the truth of his finger surfaced again.

"I got an x-ray and it was broken again," Martínez revealed. The damage was still there, still significant. "That is when a transfer to a club fell through because of the finger."

Juventus walked away.

For a goalkeeper, hands are contracts in themselves. A club willing to build around a 34-year-old needs certainty. The scans gave them doubt instead.

The door to Italy closed. Another one opened in London.

Chelsea’s gamble

Chelsea stepped in with a £7.5 million deal, fully aware of the risk. They knew the history, they saw the scans, and they signed him anyway.

"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. Not careless, but unconcerned by the idea of a player who would carry pain with him. A club prepared to back his decision to postpone the inevitable.

"One day I will need surgery," he added. Not today. Not yet.

For now, Chelsea have a goalkeeper whose finger may never be right, but whose appetite for playing through pain has been proven on the biggest stage.

Another setback: the broken jaw

Just as he began to settle in west London, another blow landed.

This time, it was his face. A broken jaw, picked up in Chelsea’s win over Everton earlier this month, has forced him out of the team again. Different injury, same pattern: rehab, patience, a fight to return.

While the jaw heals, the finger remains a constant, nagging presence. Even when the bone in his face mends, his right hand will still not be what it once was.

His immediate future is clear. Recovery first. Then the battle to reclaim his place in the starting XI at Stamford Bridge.

Beyond that lies a more complicated road. A goalkeeper in his mid-thirties, carrying permanent damage, playing for one of England’s biggest clubs and still anchoring the hopes of a nation.

The surgery will come one day. The question is simple, and ruthless: how much more can Emiliano Martínez ask of a hand that has already given him everything?