a cinematic nine-year journey from prison to Avellaneda

Nine years passed. A Adrian Martinez He had not yet been nicknamed ‘Maravilla’ – after world boxing champion Sergio Martínez – and football was far from becoming his livelihood. Much less with seeing as reality what will be a fact in the next few hours: he will sign a contract with Racing, the biggest challenge of his career, after having been fundamental for the permanence of Instituto de Córdoba in the Professional League.

Going back to 2014 allows us to begin to understand this history a little. Adrián Martínez had had a brief stint in the Villa Dálmine youth team when he was 17, but his scoring talents stood out at the Las Acacias neighborhood club, where his mother was president, and which competed in the Campana League. He still had another last name, because when he came of age he chose to take the name of the father of his heart, Gabriel, who raised him from the age of 18 months.

Soccer was reserved for the weekends, because the rest of the days he had gotten a job as a garbage collector. Everything changed completely when a car accident left his hand severely compromised: several blood vessels were cut. From there he lost his job and had a hard time getting a job again, which led to some changas of masonry. And she had a family to support…

To make matters worse, in a confusing episode, he was imprisoned in Campana Penitentiary Unit No. 21. “My brother was shot four times and the people of the neighborhood set fire to the attackers’ house. For that fact, they put me and other family members in prison. We were locked up for six months, until they decided to let me free of guilt and charge.”the forward recalled in an interview with Clarionin 2016.

“I never showed weaknesses in prison. Inside you can’t show anything. They kill, they stab, yes or yes there are fights every day, they take the police hostage. It’s another world in there. Nothing like what the news reflects. There You can’t live inside. I lived for three months in mailboxes (they are two-by-two-meter pieces located on the sides of a long hallway) because they didn’t give me permission to go upstairs, and it was a small square with humidity on the walls. “It didn’t have a toilet. There I slept on a sheet of metal. If your relatives bring you a blanket, at least you have enough to make a mattress for yourself.”he reported in a note with Página 12.

Also at that time he began to rely on religion. “Thank God I was able to leave after six months, if I didn’t have enough time inside, because the cause was serious: they accused us of having weapons of war, kidnapping, ganging up, inciting arson. There we present evidence. I went to ask the hospital for the cameras to prove that we had been with my brother and not in the house that they burned down. At that point we had three lawyers and 30 witnesses who supported what we said.”he reinforced.

But the twists of fate are indecipherable. Weeks after being released, his friend Matías Bianchi suggested that he take a test in United Defenders of Zárate. It was the beginning of 2015. “I scored goals in a couple of friendlies against teams from the Primera B Metropolitana and C and I stayed. Since the club was not going to pay me a salary, only travel expenses, my friend gave me a hand financially.”, he said. It was worth it for both him and the club, because during that season, ‘Maravilla’ Martínez scored six goals and aroused the interest of the leadership in retaining him.

With the CADU shirt, in total, he scored 34 goals in 73 games, which quickly put him on the radar of important promotion clubs, which usually compete for those players to whom goals come naturally. Thus came his move to Atlanta, where he had the pleasure of converting, among others, River, into a 1-4 in the quarterfinals of the 2017 Argentine Cup.

He needed only one season with 15 goals at Bohemio to attract attention from abroad. He was Paraguay, the destination where his career definitively catapultedwith steps through Sun of America (scorer of the team in its first tournament), Freedom (where he debuted in a Copa Libertadores and won his first title in the Paraguay Cup) and Cerro Porteño (he barely played nine games).

The 181 centimeters tall left-hander went on loan to Coritiba in Brazil and the gunpowder seemed to have gotten wet: only four goals in 22 games. At the beginning of 2023 he decided to return to Argentina: Córdoba Institute rescued Maravilla, who was the great figure of Glory in its return to the First Division after 17 years. He got 18 so many (he converted against Boca, Independiente, Racing and the classic against Belgrano, among others) in 41 games.

Carlos Tevez targeted him to reinforce the attack of Independent, Saudi Arabia’s petrodollars probed it, but there is an element of personal challenge. Adrián ‘Maravilla’ Martínez, at 31 years old, arrives with the pass in his possession to Racing – he will buy it for about two million dollars and will sign a contract until December 2026 – to reinforce the meaning of the word resilience and join the illusion of Gustavo Costas’ project. And it all happened in nine years…