Lisandro Martinez likes to tell the story of a crucial turning point in his career. He was only just into his teens, and, by his own admission, had wayward tendencies, a blurred focus on what should be his priorities.
He was a talented young footballer but uncertain about dedicating himself to that pathway if it meant taking him too far from home.
So his family helped set him up with casual work, on a building site in his home town of Gualeguay, Argentina. He turned up for his first day – a long time after the scheduled 6am start. A lesson had been served, as intended.
“My father said to me, ‘Can’t you see this isn’t for you?’ Get yourself together and go to Rosario’,” Martinez said in an interview with Efe. “I’ll never forget that.”
In Rosario, there was an apprenticeship with Newell’s Old Boys, a storied club, waiting for him. He left Gualeguay to take it up, bearing the homesickness, obliged to become suddenly independent, and embarking on a successful journey that has docked at Manchester United.
The would-be bricklayer of a decade or so ago is now occasionally known as 'The Butcher', a nickname he tends to smile about, not quite recalling who, at Ajax – the club he has just left for more than €50 million to join United – first dubbed him that.
He understands why they might have done so. Martinez is a tough, uncompromising defender, although it would be misguided to portray him as reckless.
He served a single, one-game suspension across his three seasons in Amsterdam and counts back four-and-a-half years to his one senior red card, in the colours of Defensa y Justicia, the Buenos Aires club he joined from Newell’s and from where Ajax scouted him and signed him as a 21-year-old.
His chief guide since has been Erik ten Hag, the United manager whose enthusiasm for footballers with the same Ajax past as himself is a feature of his first transfer window in his new daunting job.
Martinez developed impressively in the Dutch Eredivisie, and in the Champions League, where his duels with Erling Haaland, in Ajax’s thumping 4-0 win over Borussia Dortmund in last season’s group phase were among the performances that caught the eye.
At Ajax, he was given a hard act to follow in that he arrived in the Netherlands in the same 2019 summer that Matthijs de Ligt, the Amsterdam club’s prodigious young centre-back had been sold to Juventus.
If De Ligt’s career path is any indication about how far, and indeed how fast, an imposing young defender can progress from the Ajax launch pad, then United and Martinez should be encouraged.
De Ligt was on Monday putting the final touches to his transfer to Bayern Munich, for a sum that could rise to €80m. That would take his total career transfer fees to more than €155m. De Ligt turns 23 next month.
Martinez is a year older, and more wiry of frame. And, notably, he is shorter of stature. At 1.75m, he is no supersized centre-half.
But he has a strong leap, has worked hard on his aerial game and for all the reputation for tough tackling, is an elegant, confident user of the ball, valued by Ten Hag for his precise, confident passing, particularly with his left foot. He is also versatile, capable of operating commandingly at the base of midfield, or at full-back.
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His initial challenge at United will be to find a role in a squad which, in the past two summers, has acquired other expensive centre-halves, Harry Maguire and Rafael Varane. For all Maguire’s mixed form in 2021/22, that pair would regard themselves as first choices ahead of the new campaign.
“He has to adapt to a new country, a new club, new teammates,” said Ten Hag on Monday, welcoming a player he has pushed hard to bring to United, beating off interest from Arsenal, among others. “A lot of things will be different for him. The Premier League is high intensity, with lots of challenges.”
The strong, established relationship with the manager, would, reckoned Ten Hag, be “an advantage. He knows certain ideas”.
“He’s a warrior. He has an attitude, fighting spirit,” added Ten Hag, who will link up with Martinez when he and most of the squad return to England after their summer tour to Australia, where they play Crystal Palace on Tuesday and then Aston Villa at the weekend.
“He brings aggressiveness into the game – in a good way. I think we need that. But he’s also skilful and he can deal with the ball. I think the fans will admire him.”
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