The Spanish word “remontada” is becoming infamous around the world because of the extraordinary against-the-odds fightbacks (the literal translation) that Real Madrid consistently produce in the UEFA Champions League. But while the rulers of Europe will be hoping to conjure up one of those logic-defying comebacks against Arsenal at the Bernabéu on Wednesday, there’s a lower-profile — but equally worthy of appreciation — remontada happening at the heart of Barcelona’s brilliant back line.
The man in focus is Iñigo Martínez. Without any shadow of doubt, he is the team leader at the Spanish champions-elect, the boss of that back four, the man who marshals their exhilarating, ridiculously high-wire, advanced offside line. But he is also a man who also looked to have lost both the possibility of playing for Barcelona and, most likely, ever being chosen for his national team again.
The 33-year-old Basque central defender was first selected as a Barcelona leader-in-the-making while still at Real Sociedad in 2016-17. Ernesto Valverde, then in charge of Barcelona, decided Martínez was a must-sign player who could add steel to his aging, increasingly dilapidated Blaugrana side that eventually fell apart so dramatically (3-0 up, losing 4-3) at Liverpool in 2019 — the last time the Catalans reached a Champions League semifinal.
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When Valverde persuaded the Camp Nou moneymen to go and sign Martínez, using some of the €222 million Barcelona had just received from Paris Saint-Germain for Neymar, he was shocked to find a Praetorian guard of Barcelona old timers — Lionel Messi, Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets, Luis Suárez and Gerard Piqué — begging him not to sign Martínez.
Whatever that felt like to Valverde back then, it looks like utter madness now. It wasn’t, as such, a prohibition order on the defender himself by those players but specifically a vote from his adoring teammates that Javier Mascherano needed to be kept as Barça’s defensive leader.
“Jefecito” is Mascherano’s nickname — “the little boss.” To the gnarled competitors at Barcelona like Messi, Suárez and Alba, though, the little boss was their big boss — as he’s become again at Inter Miami CF. They wanted to keep the Argentine at all costs and believed that meant closing the door on Martínez.
How did that end up? Well, Mascherano left the club for China halfway through the 2017-18 season anyway, sick of not getting enough game time, and Barcelona fell apart defensively in the 2018 Champions League quarterfinals against AS Roma (4-1 up, out 4-4 on away goals) followed by that all-time embarrassment at Anfield a year later.
Might Martínez have made the difference? Perhaps, and not only on those nights of infamy, but because of his hard, unremittingly demanding leadership on a day-to-day basis. He is the kind of man who influences training ground culture and who, without question, would have spotted the rot and stood up to the star culture that emerged around Messi, Suárez and Piqué. Valverde needed a guy like Martínez so, so much.
Martínez himself closed the door, potentially at least, on an international future with Spain by making it clear to the FA before selection was made for the delayed Euro 2020 that he wished not to be considered. I hugely admired his decision to announce, publicly, that he was not in mental shape to do himself, or his national team, justice if chosen for the demands of that summer 2021 tournament.
“It’s tough to write this but for some time I’ve not been at 100% mentally or physically in order to compete at the level demanded by Athletic or the Spain team,” Martínez said in a statement. “To be honest with those teams, and myself, I’ve decided to step aside, disconnect, try to recharge my batteries and regain the strength which has been central to my career. This season I’ve left everything I’ve got on the pitch to try and qualify Athletic for Europe and get myself in the Spain squad for the Euro with the result that, in all sincerity, I don’t believe I’d be at the level required for this tough test which Spain faces this summer.”
It’s the type of thing, a little bit like whistleblowing by an employee who knows dark industrial secrets, where the intentions are right, the reasons behind it are honorable and laudable, many people will appreciate and understand you, but, soon, you spot the wary glances, you see opportunities diminishing, and eventually you realize that you’ve been isolated and put on the shelf. Doing the right thing is risky.
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In the eyes of both the Spain hierarchy and Barcelona’s decision makers, it might have looked like an acknowledgment that his elite level days were over. Jumping before being pushed and, on that logic, the beginning of the end.
So, to the redemption stories.
Then-manager Xavi Hernández phoned Martínez personally in summer 2023 to persuade him to leave Athletic Club for the Camp Nou, and the defender bit his hand off — despite Barcelona being in such financial difficulties that there was absolutely no guarantee that they’d be able to register Martínez to play. In the worst case, he could easily have spent six, or 12, months contracted to them but unable to pull on the Blaugrana shirt competitively because they weren’t sufficiently financially healthy to register him with LaLiga. It was a monumental leap of faith on the player’s part.
“Xavi’s words about me were magnificent, so when he calls on behalf of a club like Barcelona, everyone else needs to take second place,” Martínez said at the time. “I immediately said ‘yes’ to joining. I had no bad memories haunting me about a few years earlier when I’d been so close to joining in 2017. I joined to win.”
Injuries have been the bane of his career, but since getting fully fit, and since Hansi Flick inherited Xavi’s job, Martínez has been little short of magnificent. He is the perfect partner for an — admittedly brilliant — teenage right-sided center-half like Pau Cubarsí. He is the perfect man to patrol Flick’s ludicrously daring high back line that, often, plays offside only just inside their own half of the pitch — it’s monstrously risky and needs utter, fanatical intensity, concentration and cohesion. Four men moving as one. Every time, all the time.
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There’s a nasty little conundrum facing Flick in the team he selects for Tuesday’s Champions League quarterfinal second leg at Borussia Dortmund. If he were to be booked in Germany, Martínez would miss the first leg of the semifinal through suspension, assuming Barcelona convert their four-goal lead — something Flick would regard as disastrous.
So, rest him, right? But Flick also thinks that the best way to ensure Barcelona do convert that first-leg win into a semifinal place is for his Basque defender to boss the match against Dortmund.
Dilemmas and decisions.
Anyone in any doubt about the form or sharpness of Martínez only needed to see his “unbelievable” challenge in which he robbed Munir El Haddadi of what looked a guaranteed equalizer on Saturday as Barcelona squeaked past Leganés. It was one of those top-of-the-class, old-school challenges when the defender started third best in a two-horse race but still won — the anticipation, the sprint, the risk assessment, the cleanliness of the sliding challenge. Simply magnificent.
The fighter’s fightback is what we’re witnessing and, just maybe, it’ll take Iñigo Martínez to the Champions League final in Munich and the UEFA Nations League finals with Spain in June.
Now that, from where he was not long ago, would truly be a remontada.
