ANDmiliano, the ‘Drawing’, Martinez He did it again: in a penalty shootout that was decisive for the Argentine national team in an international tournament, he became a hero and prevented two goals that meant the ‘albiceleste’ made it to the semi-finals.
According to the criteria of
The Argentine goalkeeper is one of those ‘national team players’ who performs whenever his country needs him in international competitions. For this reason, he has been the protagonist in Argentina’s last penalty shootouts and, this time, he gave Lionel Messi a break when he missed his chance to try a ‘Panenka’ style goal.
On penalties, it seems that no one else can surpass him when it comes to decisive shootouts. There is still the vivid memory of the World Cup final in Qatar in which they ended up being world champions for the third time and in which Martinez contributed with an impressive save from Kolo Muani in the last minutes and did the same in the penalty shootout.
With the Argentine National Team, in penalty shootouts, he has saved almost half
Dibu Martinez has faced 24 penalties under the goalposts wearing the Argentina national team jersey. Of these, 18 have been part of penalty shootouts and 6 have been maximum penalties during the course of the matches.
Of those 18, Dibu has saved 8 in penalty shootouts. These include the decisive phases of the 2021 Copa América, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and the current Copa América in the United States. In percentage terms, Dibu saved 44% of penalties in decisive shootouts.
If we count shootouts and penalties in regular time, the effectiveness percentage drops to 37.5% with 9 saved out of 24. However, adding the penalties missed by the penalty taker, the Dibu comes out well off with a total of 13 goals cries stifled between the goalkeeper’s saves (9), those that hit the post (2) and those deflected by the taker (1). That is, Martinez has stopped conceding 54% of the shots he has faced.
Argentina, to the semifinals
Matínez ended up being the hero of an Argentine National Team that did not show its best version against Ecuador. Lionel Messi’s team was in trouble throughout the match against an Ecuadorian team that managed to equalize in the last minute to force a penalty shootout.
However, Ecuador missed several opportunities during the match and in the penalty shootout they came up against an infallible goalkeeper who ended up knocking them out of the competition. Messi missed his shot but Martínez showed his hierarchy and gave his team the pass to the semifinals. Now, they await the rival that will emerge from the match between Venezuela and Canada tonight.
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