Adrián Martínez

Adrián Martínez was still on loan at Coritiba, largely without goals to show for it, when Instituto de Córdoba gave him the platform that changed the trajectory of his career. Between 2023 and 2024 he scored close to twenty goals in Argentina's second tier, numbers that persuaded Racing Club to sign him for around $2 million — a fee that now looks modest set against the €122 million release clause written into the contract that followed, running to 2028.

The move up through Argentine and Paraguayan football had not been straightforward. He left Villa Dálmine as a teenager, passed through Club Las Acacias, and only found real form at Defensores Unidos, where 34 goals in 73 matches first suggested a proper goalscorer. Spells at Atlanta and Sol de América kept the momentum going before Libertad, in Paraguay, gave him his most prolonged run of first-team football and two league titles, the Apertura and Clausura of 2021. A loan to Cerro Porteño that same year produced nothing in front of goal, a reminder that the path was never entirely smooth.

None of that prepared Racing for what followed. Martínez has scored 61 goals in 118 appearances for the club, finishing as top scorer of the 2024 Copa Sudamericana with ten goals and doing the same in the 2025 Copa Libertadores with seven, including a hat-trick along the way. He scored in the Sudamericana final itself and again in the Torneo Clausura final of 2025, and put a hat-trick past San Lorenzo in February 2024 as well as a goal in the derby against Independiente. Those performances underpinned Racing's Copa Sudamericana triumph in 2024 and the Recopa Sudamericana in 2025.

His career has not been without disruption. He was arrested in 2014 in a case that was later found to be a mistake, and was suspended by the club in August 2026. Injuries have also interrupted his recent seasons, including spells out in February 2025 and again in early 2026.