Emi Martinez wants Juventus, but Villa say no and his hand needs surgery
Spalletti has finally spoken about the goalkeeper he has chased all summer, and what he said was not encouraging. Aston Villa are not selling, and a fracture Martinez carried through the World Cup is about to catch up with him.
Jul 26, 2026
Luciano Spalletti finally said out loud what everyone in Turin has been briefing for a month. Asked about Emiliano Martinez by Gazzetta dello Sport, the Juventus coach did not pretend the interest was invented. “Dibu Martinez? He’s a goalkeeper who wants to change clubs, and we’re looking for competitiveness. But we currently have two goalkeepers.” Read that last sentence again. It is not the noise of a club about to sign someone.
Villa are not budging
Aston Villa’s answer has been the same all summer and it got firmer this week. Damian Vidagany, the club’s director of football operations, put it plainly: “The goalkeeper’s future is settled, he is staying with us, and we have no intention of letting him go this summer.”
Villa hold every card here. Martinez is contracted to 2029, he is their best player in a straight fight and they have no replacement lined up. Juventus, for their part, have never wanted to pay what a keeper of that standing costs. Gazzetta reported earlier this month that they would not go beyond six or seven million euros. Villa’s number has been closer to ten. That gap is small in absolute terms and enormous in the way transfer negotiations actually work, because neither side has any reason to blink.
The finger nobody talked about
Then there is the injury, which is the strangest part of this whole story and probably the decisive one.
Martinez fractured a ring finger in the warm-up before Villa’s Europa League final against Freiburg on 20 May, the 3-0 win in Istanbul that gave the club their first European trophy since 1982. He did not have it operated on. Every specialist he saw in England and the United States told him he needed surgery, and he went to the World Cup anyway and kept goal for Argentina through the tournament with a broken hand. “My hand still hurts every day,” he said. “I knew it was going to be extremely painful.”
You can admire that and still see what it does to his summer. The operation is now coming, and Villa have not put a date on his return. Injury analysts asked about that kind of surgery have talked about ten to twelve weeks before a keeper is back in competitive football, which would take him deep into the season. A club is not going to pay a meaningful fee for a 33-year-old goalkeeper who arrives and goes straight into rehab, particularly when that club has already told the world it has two keepers on the books.
Where this ends
Martinez has done his part. Reports in the last week put him on agreed personal terms with Juventus on a deal to 2029, with the Argentine willing to take a sizeable pay cut to get to Serie A. Spalletti has been chasing a goalkeeper and a striker since before pre-season started on 13 July and has landed neither, which is why the Kolo Muani negotiation with Paris Saint-Germain has also stalled. He has made his frustration fairly obvious.
None of that moves Villa. Unai Emery gets to keep the goalkeeper who won him a European trophy, Juventus go back to a list that reportedly includes Guglielmo Vicario and Zion Suzuki, and Martinez has an operation and a season at a club he was ready to leave.
There is still a month of the window left, and windows do strange things in August. But a selling club that does not want to sell, a buying club that does not want to pay, and a player heading for an operating table is not a transfer waiting to happen.