Sam Stone

Fri 2 December 2022 12:41, UK

Emiliano Martinez has enjoyed an impressive season so far with the Argentine making a number of big saves for Aston Villa over the course of the campaign.

The 30-year-old has been a solid goalkeeper for Villa and looks set to be Unai Emery’s first choice when the Premier League does return at the end of December. However, at the moment, Martinez is currently representing his country in Qatar, with Argentina as one of the pre-tournament favourites to win the World Cup.

To say the players are under immense pressure is a huge understatement. The South American powerhouse are always among the best teams in the World and have a rich heritage when it comes to the World Cup. When potentially the two greatest players to ever live have worn the famous light blue and white jersey, there’s going to be an expectation for success.

For Matinez to be his country’s number one for this World Cup was always going to come with pressure. One mistake from the 30-year-old could leave the whole nation pointing fingers at the Aston Villa goalkeeper.

However, he’s earnt the jersey due to prior heroics and with his country now through to the knockout stages, the 30-year-old will be looking to come up with some key moments over the next couple of weeks.

For now, let’s take a look at how Martinez has performed in the group stage of the competition, compared to his displays for Aston Villa.

Below shows the prevented goals statistics per 90 minutes from the 2022/23 Premier League season, with the Argentine currently eighth in the standings with 0.11 (Stats retrieved from Wyscout).

Sadly for Martinez, his performances thus far for his country have not been to the same standard. Out of all of the goalkeepers at the World Cup, the 30-year-old currently sits 19th when it comes to prevented goals per 90 with -0.13. It’s a small sample size, but in an Aston Villa shirt, he prevents 0.24 more goals per game.

So why exactly is this occurring for Martinez? The obvious answer is that the weight of the nation’s hopes are potentially impacting fairly routine saves. Saudi Arabia’s winner in the opening group game is a prime example of a save Martinez should have been making, and one which he makes routinely for Aston Villa.

Argentina’s next two group games were fairly straightforward, but Martinez will be disappointed to have conceded more goals than what their expected goals against (XCG) predicted. The 30-year-old conceded 0.58 goals per 90 minutes in their three group games compared to Argentina’s 0.43 XCG.

Another element of Martinez’s game which is struggling, and has been highlighted in his performances for Aston Villa is his distribution. Against Brighton, the Villa keeper was culpable for the Seagulls’ opening goal, and at times during the World Cup, his longer kicking has struggled.

He has averaged a long kick success rate of 33 per cent so far in the tournament, which is a drastic decline on his Premier League success rate which stands at 67 per cent. Below is an example against Poland where the 30-year-old seems to panic in possession of the ball before launching it aimlessly back into the midfield.

The kick is weak and straight down the middle of the pitch, and it lands straight at the feet of an opposition player, with Poland gaining the ball back without doing too much work.

It’s certainly an area of his game that he will look to improve under Emery, but statistically, his longer kicking has been largely okay in the Premier League. It’s hard to blame the keeper for feeling the pressure when representing Argentina, but he will need to settle down slightly as the pre-tournament favourites enter the knockout stage.

With tougher tests to come the keeper must ensure he improves his performance, with the 30-year-old likely to be far busier than he has been in the coming weeks.

In other Aston Villa news, the club must capitalise on the Phillippe Coutinho transfer interest coming out of Brazil