Lionel Messi (35) and the dream saves of goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez (30) led Argentina to the World Cup title. Now it comes out: Argentina’s hero almost ended up at Hertha BSC…
This is revealed by ex-national goalkeeper Jens Lehmann (53), who sat on Hertha’s supervisory board for investor Lars Windhorst (46) from July 2020 to May 2021.
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Lehmann on Sky: “I know Emiliano Martínez very well. He was at Arsenal when he was young and we trained together. When I became assistant coach there, he was number two. At some point he called me because he wanted to go to a new club. At the time, I was on a committee at Hertha and suggested to them: ‘Take a look at it, it’s good and you can have it for little money.’ They didn’t do that.”
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Hertha’s ex-goalkeeping coach Zsolt Petry (56) confirms: “In spring 2020 we were looking for a strong challenger for keeper Rune Jarstein (38, now released, ed.). We had a list of 15 goalkeepers back then. The name Martinez also stuck with me at the time. I also watched Emiliano myself, a very interesting goalkeeper. But in the end we had another favourite.”
His name was Gregor Kobel (25/then with promoted Stuttgart, now Dortmund), with the ex-Hertha manager Michael Preetz (55) regarding to sign. Candidates such as Martinez, compatriot Geronimo Rulli (30/now Villarreal), Mike Maignan (27/now AC Milan) and Mark Flekken (29/Freiburg) have been removed from the list.
Bad surprise: Kobel jumped off following a final conversation with Hertha’s then coach Bruno Labbadia (56) because he didn’t want to promise him the number 1 spot.
In the end, Hertha took Alexander Schwolow (30) from Freiburg (now loaned to Schalke) for a fee of 5 million and almost got relegated. Martinez joined Aston Villa for 17.4m – and became world champion…