Emiliano Martinez helped Aston Villa win Europa League final with broken finger

[p]The 33-year-old Argentina ‌international chose to play through the pain ‌after a physio examined his finger, despite ‌the risk of aggravating the injury ahead of his country's World Cup title defence starting ‌next month.[/p][p]He made two saves ⁠as [a href="https://www.flashscore.ca/team/aston-villa/W00wmLO0/"]Villa[/a] cruised ‌to victory, [a href="https://www.flashscore.ca/game/soccer/aston-villa-W00wmLO0/freiburg-fiEQZ7C7/?mid=IefockNE"]securing their first major European trophy ​since 1982[/a] and first major silverware since their League Cup win ​in 1996.[/p][image alt="Martinez's 2025/26 Europa League stats" id="929ca003-c134-4aab-9121-a02f3b38e85e" credit-line="StatsPerform via Opta" guid="ebd7d2e4-b5b2-493f-8306-f5657a8dadb7" original-width="1080" original-height="1080" /][p][b]"Today I broke my finger during warm-ups, but I didn't see it as ⁠a bad ​thing,"[/b] [a href="https://www.flashscore.ca/player/martinez-emiliano/ziCcc5jM/"]Martinez[/a] told ESPN after the match, laughing off the injury.[/p][p]"I've never broken a finger before and every time I tried ‌to catch the ball, the finger would just slip away in the other direction. But, these are just things you have to go through."[/p][embed guid="349a04b3-7fb7-4251-9678-7328bfadf846" url="https://x.com/EuropaLeague/status/2057411116033098113" social-type="twitter" /][p]Martinez, whose penalty shootout heroics helped Argentina win the World Cup in Qatar in 2022, has been at Villa since 2020, making over 250 ‌appearances for the club.[/p][p][b]"Every time I ​step out to defend the Aston Villa ‌goal, I do so with immense pride,"[/b] he said.[/p][p]"Today, I tried to pour in all my experience, and all those training sessions that no one ⁠ever sees and ⁠finally bore fruit ‌today."[/p]