Josef Martinez is again to his game-winning greatest.
The Venezuelan striker, one of many prime 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 crew’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 ultimate MVP in the identical yr. 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 grotesque ACL tear, then a knee drawback — derailed these expectations.
Years handed, and Martinez discovered himself exterior of Atlanta’s beginning 11 and clashing with the crew’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 a substitute 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 outstanding 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 of a chance, a shot at midnight, the sort of transfer solely a crew in serious trouble would ever dare to make.
If signing Martinez was a chance, although, it proved to be an clever one. San Jose coach Bruce Area took simply 4 months to unlock Martinez’s potential and produce him again to his 2018 greatest. He scored in San Jose’s second recreation of the season, netting the winner in opposition to Sporting Kansas Metropolis, then opened the floodgates along with his hat trick in opposition to D.C. United on Matchday 7. It was his first hat trick since that charmed Atlanta season in 2018.
What modified? For Area, a coach who has labored with a number of mercurial strikers like Martinez, it was all about service.
“I feel 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 number of the runs he’s made at present. He’s getting some probabilities. He scored three targets. He may 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 crew 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 Area’s teaching — is altering all the pieces for the crew.
It is altering all the pieces for Martinez, too. He appears lighter, freer; briefly, he appears 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.
