Paris Saint-Germain icon Bernard Lama has started the war of words ahead of their match against Aston Villa, labelling Emiliano Martinez “annoying” and stating he is “not a great goalkeeper”.
Villa and PSG have never met in a competitive match before their Champions League quarter-final tie. As such, most would feel there would be no reason for any bad blood between them.
But former PSG keeper Lama has seemingly decided it’s his job to make some, as he hit out at the Villa man Martinez‘s antics towards attackers.
“He’s a bit annoying with his provocations. I don’t like that. But otherwise, he’s still a good goalkeeper, nothing more. He’s not a great goalkeeper,” Lama told RMC Sport.
“He’s a good goalkeeper who has good spells, who had his spell at the 2022 World Cup. He’s not the great goalkeeper.”
That’s not a universally accepted view, though, given Martinez has twice been named FIFA’s best men’s goalkeeper, including in 2024.
In 10 Champions League games so far this season, the Villa goalkeeper has kept five clean sheets. In the round of 16, across 180 minutes, Club Brugge scored just once against him.
As such, he’s going into the game against PSG in good competition form. In the away leg on April 9, PSG fans will surely do their utmost to make Martinez uncomfortable and throw him off that form.
While they have no reason to dislike Villa, there will be many French fans who have a distaste for Martinez, as in the 2022 World Cup final, he used, as Lama put, “provocations”, to get into the heads of a couple of the French players, and that clearly worked on some level given Argentina came out victorious.
It would be fitting to see the tie go to penalties, as it’s very likely Martinez would employ the same tactics he’s become well known for, and he’d hope he’d be able to show Lama and other critics that he is indeed one of the very best in the world.
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