Emiliano Martínez spoke about the World Cup final and said that Argentina would have won on penalty kicks.
Martínez commented on his broken finger at the World Cup and in the same interview, spoke about the World Cup final against Spain. The Argentine made 11 saves in the final and said that if the match would have gone to penalty kicks, Argentina would have won. Speaking in an interview with LosEdul, here’s what he had to say:
We all thought so. I even heard them saying, ‘We have to win it here. We can’t go to penalties’ when I went in goal. They scored on the very first play of the second half of extra time.
“I was totally confident it was going to be my day. You know that feeling when you just don’t think it’s going to go in? I think they felt it too. One of their goalkeepers told me so, and thankfully they won the match.
“The coach supported me. How could I not respond in a final, which is when he needed me most? I saw that my teammates weren’t performing, and that’s when I had to step up.
“Conspiracy theories? They make me laugh. I saw the whole thing: we were traveling for 51 days. Many people thought we just sat around drinking mate. If the match had been at 8 pm, maybe we would have been better off. At least we could have taken a nap…
“It was all marketing, that’s the only thing I didn’t like about this World Cup compared to Qatar. Here we had three days between the semi-final and the final with a trip and training session cut short. We were exhausted.
“These days people believe everything. Who wants to lose a World Cup Final? No matter how much money they offer, it’s impossible.”
