Lisandro Martinez apology: the club got what it wanted
Lisandro Martinez has apologised after meeting Jason Wilcox, Omar Berrada and Michael Carrick. The apology closes the row, but not the question he asked.
"Today I met with the club's leadership and the manager." That was the opening of Lisandro Martinez's second statement in two days, posted last night after a meeting reported by Sky Sports News to have included Jason Wilcox, Omar Berrada and Michael Carrick.
The first, on Wednesday, explained what he meant by "wanting more" and said he'd spoken "out of anger and frustration at not getting the result we all wanted". It didn't apologise. This one did. He said the frustration of the defeat led him to say how he felt "at a time and place that perhaps were not the right ones", and that "my words in that moment did not help" the club be united.
Sky report that the decision to apologise publicly was his, that the club sees the matter as closed, and that he's reportedly been fined, though any discipline will be kept private.
What changed between Wednesday and Thursday
The meeting. On Wednesday he clarified. On Thursday, after sitting down with the technical director he'd criticised and the chief executive above him, he apologised. You don't have to be cynical to see the order there.
I don't think that makes the apology fake. He probably did regret saying it on camera, straight after losing in Madrid. Players say things in post-match interviews that they wouldn't say a day later, and he's right that it wasn't the place.
What the apology doesn't touch
Nothing in either statement takes back the point about recruitment. Around £155 million went on three central midfielders this summer, and the left-back Wilcox reportedly wanted, Lewis Hall, never arrived. That was the substance of what he said, and the apology is about the timing and the setting, not the argument.
So the club has the outcome it wanted: the row is closed before Leeds, and the player has said sorry in public. What it hasn't done is explain the recruitment. Explaining it was the right response when I wrote about Martinez and Wilcox on Wednesday, and it still is.
His future
Martinez is 28 and out of contract next summer, though United have an option to extend by a year. He wanted to go to Atlético in the summer and no suitable bid arrived. An apology doesn't change any of that. My guess is he's gone next summer either way, and this week just made it more likely.
The game that started all this: Atlético 2-0 United.