“Have you got your bags packed already?”
Whenever they met, Lionel Messi would joke with Lautaro Martinez, asking if his Argentina team-mate would be joining him at Barcelona.
It was early 2020, and Barca were on the lookout for a replacement for Luis Suarez, with Martinez having become their top target for the following season.
Messi was an integral part of the whole operation to lure the Inter Milan forward to the Camp Nou.
At some point, it looked like the deal was pretty much done – but then came the Covid-19 pandemic and suddenly it fell through.
Martinez did not move from San Siro and, five years on, has made Inter his team – hitting at least 20 goals in each of the past four seasons and breaking one record after another.
He is now the Nerazzurri’s all-time leading scorer in the Champions League with 18 goals, becoming the first player to score in five consecutive matches for the team in the tournament and is currently only one goal away from equalling Hernan Crespo (nine goals in 2002-03) as the club’s top-scorer in a single edition of the competition.
That all has been enough to cement Lautaro’s place among Inter’s legends, but the 27-year-old is aiming for more as he heads to the Camp Nou on Wednesday to face Barcelona in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals.
Not only does he want to win the only major trophy that he still lacks, but also prove that he deserves more recognition than he has received so far in his career.
“Sometimes, I do feel underrated, yes,” he admitted to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera after finishing in seventh position in the 2024 Ballon d’Or award.
He is not alone in thinking that.
Those who have known Martinez since his first steps in Argentine football with Liniers and Racing share the same thoughts.
“If Lautaro did the same thing for Manchester United or Tottenham, he would be talked about more, after all, it’s the Premier League,” former Racing scout Diego Huerta told BBC Sport.
“So I don’t think it’s because of Lautaro – it’s because he plays for Inter.
“They already reached the Champions League final [against Manchester City] in 2023, with him as one of their standout players, and yet he doesn’t get the same spotlight that others do. What he did, for example, at last year’s Copa América [being top-scorer] was incredible.”
What’s missing then? His strike partner, Marcus Thuram, has suggested that Martinez should “smile a bit more”. If that’s the issue, leading Inter to the title would certainly help with that.
Getty Images‘If you want to be different on the pitch, you have to be different off it’
Martinez comes from the southern town of Bahia Blanca, a place particularly known for its love for basketball.
Like his younger brother Jano, the Argentina international himself could have had a career in that sport, but decided instead to follow his father Mario and his older brother Alan and stick with football.
Ever since making that choice, he has adopted the mantra that says if you want to be different on the pitch, you have to be different off it.
He has always taken it very seriously.
A centre-back turned forward, he was only 15 when he made his senior debut with Liniers, scoring in his very first game. But that was not the most impressive thing about it. What surprised his team-mates was the level of discipline he already presented at that age.
“In Bahia, there was a TV channel that broadcast our matches, so I used to go there to ask for the videotapes. I had to buy them because they weren’t going to give them to me for free,” he revealed.
“It was my dream to become a professional footballer. Now it’s different, of course, I get everything edited and sent to me. Some people are surprised by the way I am or the way I think. But for me, it feels completely natural.”
It’s no wonder that when Racing spotted him a while later, they took him right away – no trial needed.
“He’s one of the most incredible professionals I’ve ever seen,” said Huerta, now a technical secretary at Cerro Porteno in Paraguay.
“He was the complete package – a very strong mentality, very serious, very committed to work, from the so-called ‘invisible trainings’ to taking care of himself – he doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink alcohol, doesn’t drink Coca-Cola.
“Our psychologist Cecilia Contarino used to run tests to measure players’ concentration. The scores ranged from nought to 100. She’d tell me that 60 to 70 was already acceptable for a high-performance athlete. Some players got 30 or 40 though. And this kid? He broke the record. He scored 98.”
This video can not be played
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
‘Are there really that many forwards in the world better than him?’
Having arrived from Liniers earlier that year, Martinez watched the 2014 World Cup from Casa Tita Mattiussi, Racing’s famous club dormitory.
In the second edition of a book series called Pelota de Papel – featuring stories written by players and coaches such as Pablo Aimar, Juan Pablo Sorin, Javier Saviola and Jorge Sampaoli – he reflected on that experience.
Martinez couldn’t know at the time, but four years from then he would make his international debut. He has won a World Cup and two Copa America titles with his country.
“In my room at Racing’s dormitory – one of my favourite places in the world – I used to sit and think about what it would be like to make it to the first team. But I had this idea stuck in my head that I’d never be like those idols I admired. Diego Milito, Roger Martinez, Gustavo Bou, and ‘Licha’ Lopez – those are real players,” he wrote.
“Every time I thought about playing, the first thing that came to mind was that I’d never earn a spot on the team, and that I’d have to go back to my hometown before long. I always dreamed of being like them.
“Today, in one of those same rooms in that beautiful dormitory, there’s probably a kid who thinks he doesn’t belong in the team. That’s exactly the moment when you have to work even harder, train more, sleep well, eat better, and above all keep dreaming. Because this isn’t just a story: your dream can come true.”
Martinez’s did.
He broke into Racing’s first team replacing his idol Milito in 2015, left the club as the most expensive transfer ever at $31m (£23m) in 2018 and has since become the first foreigner to score 150 goals for Inter.
He may still feel underrated, but that can be about to change.
“Are there really that many forwards in the world better than Lautaro – someone who can be a goalscorer and a leader, decisive on the pitch and a true team player off it?” asked La Gazzetta dello Sport after Inter knocked Bayern Munich out of the Champions League.
The answer will be found soon.
