One of the summer’s untold transfer stories now has its explanation. Emiliano “Dibu” Martínez, the Chelsea goalkeeper who finished as 2026 World Cup runner-up with Argentina, has told the Argentine newspaper Olé that a finger injury cost him a move. He does not name the club, but Calciomercato.com identifies it as Juventus, who ultimately signed Vicario on loan from Tottenham.
A Finger Broken in Half After the Europa League Final
Martínez’s account begins on the night Aston Villa beat Freiburg in the Europa League final. “I dislocated a finger during the final. I went back to Birmingham very happy, we had won, but my finger hurt a lot. I went to hospital and they told me it was broken in half. That is when I started to cry, because I thought I wouldn’t recover in time for the World Cup.”
He describes the weeks that followed in vivid detail. “On a scale of one to ten, my finger affected me ten out of ten. Until the day before the match against Algeria, I was diving with one arm, like a zombie. Every time I put my hand down, I saw stars from the pain. I cried until midnight because my finger was swollen like a sausage. If a ball had hit me directly on the tip of the finger, the whole finger could have exploded. Every time a ball came at me, I prayed that my finger would not dislocate. I screamed in pain every time I put my gloves on and begged to have them cut. I even had to shower with a plastic bag over my hand, holding it up. But for Argentina I would have done anything.”
The Lost Transfer
The Juventus link comes in a single line. “I lost a transfer to a club because of my finger,” Martínez says. The reason, he explains, was medical: “All the doctors gave me ten weeks of recovery and said it was impossible for me to play in those conditions, that I needed surgery.” Chelsea, he says, did not mind and played him anyway. “I need the operation, because I keep playing despite the pain.”
What It Means for Juventus
The admission fits the pattern of Juventus’s goalkeeping summer. With Grabara’s ACL rupture ending his season in September and Di Gregorio sent to Bournemouth, the club ended up with Vicario on a free loan from Tottenham with an €8m option, and the Italian has since been praised for his post-match maturity after the Lazio defeat. The detail that Juventus pursued a goalkeeper of Martínez’s calibre, and that the move collapsed on medical grounds, adds a footnote to a window in which several first-choice targets slipped away.
