Josef Martinez is again to his game-winning finest.
The Venezuelan striker, one of many high all-time goal-scorers within the historical past of Main League Soccer, led his San Jose Earthquakes to a 6-1 victory over D.C. United on Sunday. Martinez scored three of his group’s six targets and earned himself the match MVP award.
It is a heartwarming turnaround for a stellar participant who has confronted greater than his share of setbacks.
In 2018, Martinez was the centerpiece of Atlanta United’s fearsome assault. He scored a record-breaking 28 targets and closed out the season as simply the fifth participant in historical past to be voted league MVP and cup last MVP in the identical 12 months. It is rarified air: the likes of David Beckham, Thierry Henry and Landon Donovan could not handle the identical feat throughout their MLS careers. Lionel Messi, for all his expertise, hasn’t come shut but both.
MLS followers and pundits anticipated Martinez to proceed that league-leading kind as he pushed in 2019. A critical of accidents — first a ugly ACL tear, then a knee downside — derailed these expectations.
Years handed, and Martinez discovered himself exterior of Atlanta’s beginning 11 and clashing with the group’s new coach, Gabriel Heinze. He signed with struggling membership Inter Miami to reboot his profession … however he signed in January 2023, simply six months earlier than the membership rebranded itself by hiring Messi and Luis Suarez.
As an alternative of returning to the highest, Martinez sank backwards, and Miami declined to resume his contract when it expired on the finish of the season.
When Martinez arrived in San Jose this winter, he did so in a precarious place. Sure, he had the shine from his exceptional 2018 season, however that shine was dulled by his harm historical past and lack of constant taking part in time. San Jose’s assist of him was thought-about of venture, a shot at nighttime, the sort of transfer solely a group in serious trouble would ever dare to make.
If signing Martinez was of venture, although, it proved to be an clever one. San Jose coach Bruce Enviornment took simply 4 months to unlock Martinez’s potential and produce him again to his 2018 finest. He scored in San Jose’s second sport of the season, netting the winner towards Sporting Kansas Metropolis, then opened the floodgates together with his hat trick towards D.C. United on Matchday 7. It was his first hat trick since that charmed Atlanta season in 2018.
What modified? For Enviornment, a coach who has labored with plenty of mercurial strikers like Martinez, it was all about service.
“I believe a few of our points in our first six video games away … We haven’t discovered him,” Arena said of Martinez. “We haven’t seen a few of the runs he’s made at present. He’s getting some possibilities. He scored three targets. He might have had a fourth one proper on the finish. That’s an actual optimistic.”
Certainly it’s. Fairly merely, discovering Martinez means discovering targets, and no group in MLS wants to try this greater than San Jose. After a tough 2024 that noticed the membership sink to final place, Martinez’s kind — impressed by Enviornment’s teaching — is altering every little thing for the group.
It is altering every little thing for Martinez, too. He seems to be lighter, freer; in brief, he seems to be like the person who lifted the MLS Cup in 2018 once more. The league is all the higher for it.
Martinez and San Jose will return to MLS motion on 12 away at LAFC.
