Chelsea goalkeeper Emiliano Mart\u00ednez has explained the scale of the injuries that have marked the last few months of his career, saying he will never fully close his right hand again after suffering a fractured ring finger during the 2026 World Cup period.<\/p>\n
Mart\u00ednez said the problem began in the Europa League final, when the finger detached and later proved to be broken in half. The former Aston Villa goalkeeper recalled being in tears when he saw the scan, fearing he would not make it to the World Cup. Rather than undergo surgery, he and Argentina\u2019s medical staff chose a different route. He played with a plastic cast, heavy bandaging and a special glove made by adidas, with the finger put back into place and protected throughout the tournament.<\/p>\n
The decision allowed him to start every match of Argentina\u2019s run, though he admitted the injury limited him badly. Even on the eve of Argentina\u2019s opener against Algeria, he said he was \u201cdiving like a zombie, with just one arm.\u201d He also revealed he trained with a volleyball for most of the competition. Despite that, the finger still prevented a move to a Serie A club, believed to be Juventus, after the World Cup. Mart\u00ednez said the transfer collapsed when a fresh X-ray showed the finger had broken again.<\/p>\n
He eventually completed a move to Chelsea in the final hours of the summer window, but another setback followed soon after. Seven games into his Chelsea career, he collided with Everton defender Jarrad Branthwaite while attempting to claim a free kick. The impact left him with a broken jaw and concussion, and he has no memory of the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cI preferred the jaw than the head to be honest,\u201d Mart\u00ednez said. \u201cIt was one of the most beautiful knockouts, in the UFC that would\u2019ve been the knockout of the night. I saw birds flying around for many days honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mart\u00ednez required four screws in his jaw and is still unable to eat pur\u00e9es. Reflecting on the twin injuries, he said the finger remained the worse problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mart\u00ednez says his finger injury is permanent and explains why a transfer collapsed after the World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22154,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,961],"tags":[242,180,182],"class_list":["post-22155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-international","tag-injury","tag-player-news","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}