Atlético Madrid inflicted a routine 2-0 Champions League defeat on Manchester United in Madrid on Tuesday night, but the real drama arrived afterwards as Lisandro Martínez launched an extraordinary public attack on the club’s hierarchy and transfer policy.
United were poor from the start. Inside the opening minute they allowed their hosts to take an early lead when Pablo Barrios’s shot beat Senne Lammens, the ball squeezing under Leny Yoro before trundling over the line. United went on to create chances they did not take, Atlético had a goal ruled out by VAR for handball, and both sides hit the woodwork. The game effectively ceased to be a meaningful contest once Yoro was shown a red card, and Ademola Lookman made sure of the win with a follow-up strike after Lammens had saved from Jonathan David.
The post-match entertainment belonged to Martínez, who used his interview with Amazon Prime’s pitchside reporter Gabriel Clarke to aim squarely at those above the manager. “Tonight it is easy to say the coach, easy to say the players but also we have to see other areas,” he said, indicating in a direction generally taken to mean upstairs. “I expect more [investment], 100%. I expect more from our technical director [Jason Wilcox]. Last season we did everything, we created the base to create an amazing team. You can’t keep changing, changing, changing the manager. What about other areas? I can’t say more.”
He could, and did. Martínez followed up in an interview with Peter Schmeichel for a CBS show, again taking aim at Wilcox and United’s transfer policy. Schmeichel, a former Manchester United goalkeeper who serves as a global ambassador for the club, looked visibly flustered and was unable to shut the defender down despite repeated attempts to change the subject.
Reaction was mixed. Some argued that a player so often found in close proximity to on-pitch errors this season had no right to criticise his teammates, while others felt the club’s dirty laundry should be washed behind closed doors. The Guardian’s Jamie Jackson reported that Martínez was expressing an opinion shared by most of his teammates.
The consequences could be steep. Martínez may face a hefty fine and an indefinite spell training with the younger players, with that potentially just the start of any punishment heading his way. Having delivered little on the pitch for much of the season and defended with scant assurance, he is far from indispensable and may be angling for a January exit. If the club’s technical director is still in place by then, one suggested act of revenge would be to keep the outspoken defender on board until his contract expires in June.