The central defender is convinced that there is a squad to fight for all the titles
He assures that he is very competitive and aspires to have minutes
The Barça train had passed him more than once but for various reasons he had never been able to get on. But the third time is the charm. Iñigo Martínez has arrived at the Barça club in its footballing prime.
“It is an opportunity that rarely comes and it was at a time when I had been competing in the League for many years with other teams and needed a change. Barça came and was interested from the beginning and here I am. When you have been fighting for many years and with the age that I am, a top club comes to you, it is much easier to make the decision”, he assures, in an interview with SPORT.
He is aware that he has landed in a large team and precisely his position is one of the most well covered of all. He will have to compete with Koundé, Araujo and Christensen to have minutes and that is not an easy task. But Iñigo, who confesses to us that he is very competitive, is willing to fight although, logically, he puts the common good first because the main objective is to win titles.
“When you come to Barça you know what there is, very good players and here we all want to play. The year is very long, there are many games ahead, sometimes it will be time to jump and other times not. We all know that sometimes you will compete and other times you won’t but the important thing is that this is a team and what you have to do is for the team to push forward and win as many titles as possible”, he explains in the interview, held this Wednesday at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper.
Iñigo is convinced that there is a team to fight all the titles, also the Champions League, where in the last two years Barça has not passed the first phase. “Really, I can’t tell you much about the Champions League either because inside it still isn’t being talked about. We’re only competing for the League and we focus on those games. When the Champions League arrives, the coach will tell us what he has to say but it’s clear that competing in the Champions League and even winning it must be our goal. Despite having a lot of change and a lot of young people. We know that winning it is very difficult but we have a team for that and much more so we will go all out“, he says, convinced.
And in the squad, without expecting it, a young man named Lamine Yamal has appeared, who is surprising everyone with his self-confidence and quality. The Basque central defender prescribes patience and not loading him with too much pressure. “Lamine is a very important player for the team and he is showing it. The important thing now is not to give him a lot of ball, I think we have to go slowly with him because rushing is bad companions”.
Precisely, Iñigo Martínez recalls in the interview that he gave up playing in a Euro Cup because there came a time when he needed to stop and that with the pressure and demands of today, sometimes it is good to know how to stop in time.
The full interview can be read in the online and print edition of SPORT this Thursday.