A key player for Aston Villa and Unai Emery, as well as for the Argentine national team, Emiliano Dibu Martínez is on everyone’s lips after winning the second Yashin trophy in a row at the Ballon d’Or ceremony in Paris last Monday. “It’s madness to have received the award for the second consecutive year. I never imagined I would receive it once, let alone twice. I still don’t believe it,” he declared in the interview given to DSports. But between ambitions and leadership, at 32, is there the idea of playing until 40? “As long as my body allows it – he replied -. Life is very long after that. I renewed for another four years (at Aston Villa, ed.), so I’ll stay until I’m 35 or 36”.
Assuring: “I go year by year, I know that my body can hold up to 41 or 42 without problems. With what I’m doing physically, the stretching and so on. Footballers’ lives are getting longer nowadays. And, the way I work , I’ll make it. When my head explodes, there will be nothing to do.” After that the Dibu was primed about the remote possibility of playing at homeperhaps for Boca or River Plate: “If he’s not in Independiente, I wouldn’t play anywhere else. I didn’t play in the Prima, I left the academy. Is he a thorn in my side? It could be. But I would have been a thorn in my side if I hadn’t played for the national team. By playing for the national team I feel like I’m also representing Independiente.”
Finally, a comment on the race to qualify for the 2026 World Cup: “The preliminaries are very tough. Bolivia has grown. In Colombia and Ecuador it is 40 degrees at 2 in the afternoon. With Paraguay in Asunción it will be very difficult. Every time it is more difficult. Sometimes it seems easy because we are in the lead and we win all of them matches, but it’s very difficult. It’s remarkable, it’s not as easy as it seems, and we’re already one step away from qualifying.”