When Los Amarillos announced on October 8th that they were bringing in the 43-year-old to replace Luis Carrión, the club hadn’t won a match in any competition in 241 days, not since February 10th.
Since then, UD Las Palmas have won five of their seven matches under Diego Martínez. One of those was a 7-0 victory against sixth-tier Ontiñena CF in the Copa del Rey, while the other four wins have all come in LALIGA EA SPORTS, to move the club away from the relegation zone and up to 14th position.
Over the past six matchdays, only Atlético de Madrid have collected more points than the Canary Islanders. And, making this run even more impressive is the fact that five of Martínez’s seven games so far have come on the road, including their 2-1 victory away at FC Barcelona on Saturday in Matchday 15.
With the Catalan club celebrating their 125th anniversary and with Hansi Flick’s team in need of a positive result after dropping points away at Real Sociedad and RC Celta, many assumed this would be something of an exhibition for the league leaders. However, Martínez set his UD Las Palmas team up excellently and they stepped out at the Estadi Olímpic and earned a historic result, the team’s first win away at FC Barcelona since 1971.
UD Las Palmas had a solid game plan, and scored both their goals in the second half via clinical counter-attacks, one by Sandro Ramírez and the other by Fábio Silva. FC Barcelona did have many shots of their own, 27 in total, but only eight of them were on target and Los Amarillos largely limited Barça to half-chances, with goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen making several comfortable saves against his former club. It even required something special for the home team to score their one goal, an outside-the-box strike from in-form Raphinha.
For the new coach, it was a complete performance. He stated after the game: “We played a very good game of football. I really liked the performance, both in defence and attack. We knew how to pause and we knew when to attack. We also knew how to suffer when we had to. I felt we were a well-organised team with very clear ideas.”
This is clearly a squad that understands what the coach is asking of them. When Martínez took over, there was no major revolution in terms of tactics or personnel, as his preferred 4-2-3-1 formation isn’t much different to what was in place before and it’s largely the same players who are starting, with just a few, such as Viti Rozada or José Campaña, being given more prominence than before. What Martínez has done is make minor tweaks and give his players renewed confidence by allowing them to play to their strengths.
This won’t surprise anyone who has been following Martínez’s career so far. Having started coaching at the young age of 20, Martínez already boasts over two decades of experience in the dugouts and achieved great things as an assistant and youth team coach at Sevilla FC, before setting out as a head coach.
It was when he led Granada CF to the 2020/21 Europa League quarter-finals that he truly made a name for himself, but many in Spanish football circles had already known for years that Martínez was an intelligent coach who knew how to connect with his players.
At the Estadio de Gran Canaria, he is proving once again that he has what it takes to help a more modest squad achieve great things. UD Las Palmas are rising up the table and there are still two-thirds of the season to go.
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