{"id":138,"date":"2026-05-28T10:28:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=138"},"modified":"2026-05-28T10:28:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:28:59","slug":"revealed-why-emi-martinez-almost-pulled-out-of-europa-league-final-after-unfortunate-warm-up-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=138","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: Why Emi Martinez almost pulled out of Europa League final after unfortunate warm-up incident"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"article-body\" data-affiliate-button-variant=\"B\">\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align:start\"><span>Martinez has opened up on a secret injury battle that almost cost him his place in the starting line-up against Freiburg. The 33-year-old World Cup winner revealed that he suffered a broken finger during the pre-match warm-up, requiring urgent attention from the club&#8217;s medical staff before he could take to the pitch in Turkey.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:start\"><span>Despite the significant discomfort, Martinez completed the full 90 minutes as Villa cruised to a 3-0 victory. Reflecting on the incident, the goalkeeper admitted it was a first for him, stating: &#8220;Today I broke my finger during the warm-up and for me, every bad thing brings something good. I&#8217;ve done this my whole life and I&#8217;ll keep doing it. Should I be worried? Well, I&#8217;ve never had a broken finger before. Every time I caught the ball, it went the other way. But these are things you have to go through, and I&#8217;m proud to defend Aston Villa.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Martinez has opened up on a secret injury battle that almost cost him his place in the starting line-up against&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}