Dibu Martinez and the Dark Art of the Penalty Shootout

Emiliano Martinez has walked to his line for four penalty shootouts in Argentina's shirt at major tournaments - two Copa Americas, two matches at the 2022 World Cup - and Argentina have won every single one. That is not luck repeated four times. It is a method: part psychological pressure applied right up to the edge of what the laws of the game allow, part a genuinely unusual read of what actually forces a professional footballer to miss from twelve yards. If Sunday's final against Spain in East Rutherford goes to penalties, this is what Argentina's goalkeeper will actually do, and what the evidence says about whether any of it works.

Major-tournament shootouts won

4 of 4 (2021, 2022 x2, 2024)

Penalties faced in those shootouts

24

Saved outright

9

Hit the post or missed the target

3 (2 post, 1 off target)

Opponent conversion rate

50%

The toolkit: what he actually does

Martinez's repertoire is not a secret. It has been filmed, replayed and dissected after every shootout he has played a part in, and it barely changes tournament to tournament because it keeps working.

• Talking directly to the kicker. Before Davinson Sanchez's penalty in the 2021 Copa America semi-final against Colombia, Martinez told him, "I'm sorry but I'll eat you, bro" - then dived to his left and saved it.
• Fake generosity with the ball. In the 2022 World Cup quarter-final shootout against the Netherlands, he pretended to hand Steven Berghuis the ball before dropping it instead, breaking Berghuis's rhythm before he even reached the spot.
• Moving the ball out of reach. In that same shootout he kicked the ball away toward the centre circle ahead of Wout Weghorst's turn, forcing Weghorst to jog after it and reset. He simply stared down Teun Koopmeiners before his kick with no ball trick at all.
• Delaying with the ball itself. In the World Cup final shootout against France, Martinez threw the ball away before Aurelien Tchouameni could get set; Tchouameni's kick went wide moments later.
• Coaching his own teammates mid-shootout. Paulo Dybala later said Martinez had told him to aim down the middle in that same final because French goalkeeper Hugo Lloris kept diving to the sides. Dybala nearly went to the corner instead, changed his mind at the last second, and scored through the middle.

He had advised me to shoot down the middle after they had missed. They always dive.

Paulo Dybala, on Emiliano Martinez's advice before the 2022 World Cup final shootout

Does it actually work?

Geir Jordet, a sports psychologist at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences who has spent years studying penalty shootouts, has put numbers on part of this. His research finds that a goalkeeper who performs a visible distraction on the line - delaying, dancing, engaging the kicker directly - raises the chance of a miss by roughly 10 to 15 percent. That is not Martinez guessing the correct corner more often than anyone else; goalkeepers who commit early and guess right still only stop a fraction of the penalties they read correctly. What the distraction does is pull a kicker's attention away from the single most mechanically simple, most psychologically loaded action in football, at the exact moment automatic technique matters most.

Twenty-four penalties is a small sample to draw hard conclusions from, and Martinez has had games where his positioning and reach did the work with no theatre attached at all - the outstretched save low to his right against Virgil van Dijk in that same Netherlands shootout was pure goalkeeping, no gamesmanship required. But a 50% conversion rate against him, held up against research showing the specific tactics he uses do measurably raise miss rates, is not a coincidence sitting on top of a coincidence. The two lines of evidence point the same way.

The pushback

Not everyone thinks this belongs in the sport. Hugo Lloris, the France goalkeeper on the other end of the 2022 final shootout, drew a clear personal line afterward, saying he had no interest in "rattling my opponents, crossing that line." Fabio Capello and Edwin van der Sar both criticised the approach publicly, and Emmanuel Petit suggested Martinez needed help managing his emotions on the pitch.

FIFA responded institutionally. After the 2022 World Cup, it introduced conduct guidance for goalkeepers that explicitly prohibits psychological gamesmanship, using tactics to delay a kick, and speaking or gesturing to distract a penalty taker - rules widely read as a direct response to what Martinez had just done in Qatar. It is worth separating that from a later incident: in September 2024, FIFA suspended Martinez for two matches over conduct during World Cup qualifiers, but that ban followed a groin-thrusting gesture with a replica trophy and a confrontation with a television camera, not anything from a shootout. The rule change aimed at his shootout conduct and the ban for his qualifier conduct are two different stories that get run together.

Argentina's edge if it goes to penalties

Argentina are the defending champions walking into this final, and Lionel Messi - 39 years old and playing what he has said is his last World Cup - has already won the shootout that mattered most, in Lusail in 2022, with Martinez behind him. If Sunday's final against Spain is still level after extra time, Argentina do not just have a goalkeeper with a good save percentage. They have one with a specific, researched method for what to do in the ninety seconds between a penalty being awarded and a ball being struck, and a perfect record in the only situation where that method gets tested. Whether Spain's takers have prepared for it the way Dybala prepared for Lloris is the kind of detail that decides finals. The moment this one is settled - by open play or by penalties - is also the moment War of Soccer, the free 3D game built around this exact tournament, goes live for anyone who wants to relive it.