Emiliano Martinez was caught reverting to his old habits as he appeared to taunt Juventus goalkeeper Michele Di Gregorio.
The Villans were held to a goalless draw at home in their Champions League clash with the Serie A giants on Wednesday night, despite having numerous opportunities. The main talking point emerged late on when Morgan Rogers was controversially denied a goal in front of the Holte End, due to a foul on Di Gregorio by Diego Carlos.
Carlos was penalised for colliding with the Italian goalkeeper while attempting to reach Youri Tielemans’ free-kick delivery, causing Di Gregorio to drop the ball. Rogers believed he had secured all three points by slotting the ball into an unguarded net, only for the goal to be disallowed due to the foul.
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Following an impressive performance that saw Villa become the first team to maintain clean sheets in their initial three Champions League home matches since Chelsea in 1999, Martinez returned to his familiar habit of playful mockery. After the final whistle, the Argentinian seemed to mimic Di Gregorio by laughing and clutching his side, imitating the keeper’s fall from his earlier collision with Carlos.
Martinez is no stranger to causing a stir, as most football fans will be well aware. The 32-year-old grabbed headlines with his cheeky antics during Argentina’s epic 2022 World Cup final victory, famously thrusting the Golden Glove trophy towards his nether regions, reports the Mirror.
(Image: CameraSport via Getty Images)
Back in April, the shot-stopper was at it again, mocking Lille fans by taunting them post-saving a pair of penalties in a nail-biting Europa Conference League shootout. Ollie Watkins didn’t hold back either on Europe’s habit of coddling goalies post the controversial disallowance of Rogers’ goal.
He told TNT Sports: “I think it was soft. Maybe in the Premier League, it’s a goal. But in Europe, the goalkeepers are protected a lot. It’s one of them. I thought we scored. But to be fair, this game had a 0-0 written all over it. It’s a positive result. The fans want to see lots of goals and we do ourselves.
“But the most important thing was we didn’t lose tonight. Juventus are a massive team and they played well. But we kept them out and now we move on to the weekend.” During the match, Martinez only really got his gloves dirty once in the first half, when he kept out a strike from Francisco Conceicao.
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The action heated up for him after half-time as Teun Koopmeiners floated a cross to the far stick, leading Conceicao to nod it fiercely at the target from mere yards out. Martinez miraculously managed to scrape the ball off the goal line, keeping the game at 0-0.
Following their draw with Juventus, Villa have now kept clean sheets in all three of their home games against Italian teams, having previously defeated Bologna and Inter. Their only setback in the 2024/25 Champions League was a 1-0 loss to Club Brugge earlier this month, with Hans Vanaken netting a penalty in the 52nd minute.
Villa are currently ninth in the Champions League table with three victories, one draw, and one defeat. However, the table is so close after five matches that they are just one win away from second-place Inter. On December 10, Villa will head to the Red Bull Arena to face a floundering RB Leipzig, with the German team having lost all five of their Champions League matches to date.
Leipzig were defeated 2-1 by Atletico in their first match of the tournament, followed by a 3-2 loss to a ten-man Juventus in their next game. They then suffered a 1-0 defeat to Liverpool, before Celtic thrashed them 3-1. Marco Rose also came away empty-handed from the club’s most recent encounter with Inter on Tuesday, losing 1-0 after Castello Lukeba scored an own goal.