Adrián Martínez: The Garbage Collector Who Went to Prison for a Crime He Didn’t Commit

Imagine you’re sleeping peacefully at home. You’ve dozed off, relaxed and unaware of what’s coming. Then, in the middle of the night, your door is smashed in and a swarm of police officers storms inside—like a scene from a movie or a crime series. They arrest you without explanation, without even giving you time to understand what’s happening. Next thing you know, you’re behind bars for something you didn’t do. Some might say, “Sounds like a movie script.” Others might say, “That’s my worst nightmare.” For Adrián Emmanuel Martínez, it’s real life. The Argentine striker is now 31 years old, finally playing for a big club—Racing Club—and scoring goals regularly. But the road here was anything but ordinary.

Nicknamed “Maravilla” (Marvel), Martínez doesn’t fit the mold of a typical football story. This isn’t the tale of a gifted kid escaping poverty with dazzling street football skills. He never played for a youth national team. He didn’t rise through a top academy. He wasn’t scouted by a European club. None of that. Adrián Martínez was just the guy next door. And he wasn’t even obsessed with football. He rarely watched matches. He supported River Plate, simply because, as he puts it, “You’ve got to support someone.” His relationship with the game? He played in the neighborhood for fun—and all he did was run. And run. And run.A professional career? That was never the plan. Football was just a hobby. A game.

Growing up, Adrián worked for a waste management company, riding the back of a garbage truck. He was, quite literally, a garbage collector. One day, after finishing his shift, he was riding his motorcycle through the city center when disaster struck. A vintage Ford from the 1960s—one of those heavy metal beasts with zero safety features—slammed into him. Martínez came close to losing his life. He survived, but not without damage. The car’s metal tore into his arm, severing tendons and blood vessels. He nearly lost the limb. To this day, the scars run across his right arm. It’s now shorter, and he can’t fully straighten it. He escaped with his life, but not unscathed.

Years After His Ordeal, Adrián Martínez Finds Peace in Paraguay with His Family

But the crash didn’t just leave scars—on his body or soul. The real problem was that Adrián no longer had full use of his right arm. He couldn’t lift heavy loads anymore. So he asked the waste management company to transfer him from garbage collection to street sweeping. They refused. Instead, they planned to fire him, citing a medical report that claimed he was unfit to work. But to make things worse, he wouldn’t receive severance—because, according to that same report, “he doesn’t appear to have any serious issue.” Just like that, Adrián was left out in the cold. No job. No compensation. No way forward. He was 21 years old and unemployed. He eventually found work as an assistant to his uncle, a construction worker. At the same time, he began playing football with a local amateur side called Las Acacias—a team where his own mother was the president. Adrián was trying to rebuild his life. He was already married to the love of his life. But he had no idea that the worst was yet to come.

“My brother wasn’t a saint,”Adrián says. He offers no details. No excuses. No sugarcoating.What happened?In their neighborhood, there was a family known for causing trouble—according to Adrián. They clashed with almost everyone, including Adrián’s 16-year-old brother. The feud escalated, and one day, that family shot his brother in the chest—three times.He was rushed to the hospital. The neighborhood erupted. Furious residents, seeking justice, surrounded the shooters’ house and set it on fire.While Adrián was keeping vigil at the hospital, where his brother was fighting for his life, the nightmare unfolded. A month later, the police broke down his door. The same scene described at the start of this story played out in real life.

It was 2014.Police arrested Adrián, his father, and his youngest brother. The latter, being a minor, was quickly released. Adrián was not. The charges? Serious and sweeping: illegal possession of firearms, kidnapping, forming a criminal gang, arson, and theft. All accusations came from the very people who had shot his brother. The police claimed Adrián and his family had stolen a white pickup truck, chairs, a table, and a washing machine. They even confiscated them. In truth, these were household items Adrián and his wife had bought—and they had receipts to prove it.

Adrián and his father insisted they were at the hospital during the incident. “There were around 200 people outside that house—there were even newspaper photos,” Martínez said.They hired lawyers. They had 30 eyewitnesses backing up their version of events. The accusers had only their two daughters as witnesses. The Martínez family requested security footage from the hospital to prove their alibi. Meanwhile, they waited—month after month—for the case to move. Nothing happened.In the end, Adrián spent six months in prison before being released and cleared of all charges. But those six months left a permanent mark.

“The doors unlocked at 7 a.m. If you didn’t get up right then, they’d steal your stuff,” Martínez recalled.If you were still sleeping, they’d use these long sticks—like makeshift fishing rods—to fish your belongings out of the cell.”

“Of course I feared for my life. There were at least two or three times I was in real danger. I was nearly stabbed. They had a broomstick with a blade at the end. That’s what they used to attack you.One time, something happened with a friend, and I barely got away. I saw people getting killed like it meant nothing. Like life had no value. I saw stabbings, people dragged by the legs and taken away to be killed.”

“Usually, they’d grab two guys—stab one because he said something, and let the other walk. And they’d say another murder didn’t matter—it was just two more years on the sentence, and they’d claim self-defense anyway. I don’t want to say more about what I saw—because if I do, the courts will come knocking,” Martínez concluded in an interview.

In 2017—years after Adrián Martínez had already been released—an investigation into Unidad 21, the prison in Campana, exposed a harrowing truth: The facility, designed for 640 inmates, was crammed with over 1,100. Mold covered the walls. Sewage leaked inside the cells. Rats and cockroaches were everywhere. 280 inmates slept without mattresses. There was just one doctor for them all. By 2019, the prison’s deputy director was fired after being accused of raping a staff member.

These were the conditions Martínez had survived. He remembers them all too well.His cell?“It was the size of a small bathroom—two by two meters. That’s where you slept, woke up, and did everything. No toilet. No space to move. A sheet of metal served as a bed, and if you were lucky, someone from the outside might bring you a blanket to use as a mattress.” A little light crept in through a small, barred window. You didn’t leave. Not ever. Except on Fridays—visitation day.

The food?A loaf of bread meant to last you for days. Luckily, Adrián’s relatives visited him often and brought real food. And he shared it—with everyone. “That’s how it worked. If someone had visitors, they shared with the others,” he said. Some prisoners had rigged makeshift stoves using wires from light fixtures to cook. “We had a tiny pot. We’d throw some noodles in there to boil,” Martínez recalled.

In the middle of all that darkness, something unexpected happened.Adrián Martínez found solace in faith—and started thinking seriously about football again. A friend—who would later become his agent—promised him a trial with a team once he got out.He kept his word.Shortly after his release, Martínez got a chance with the legendary (just kidding) DefensoresUnidos de Zárate. He played a few minutes in friendlies against low-league teams—and even scored. But there were two major problems:He was in terrible shape after months in prison and the coach, knowing Adrián’s criminal record, kept him on the bench.

The team wasn’t doing well. Martínez wasn’t a starter—but when he played, he scored. Still, he was ready to give up.“I never believed you could make money from football,” he would say. “I thought life would always owe me something.”But then, the club finally offered him a professional contract.He didn’t need to look for construction work again.At nearly 25 years old, Adrián Martínez officially became a professional footballer.

Less than four years after rotting in a prison cell, Adrián Martínez was scoring a hat-trick in the Copa Libertadores.

His breakout came in the 2015–16 season, when he netted 21 goals in 41 games in Argentina’s fourth division, finishing as the league’s second-top scorer. Despite being left-footed, most of his goals came from his right—another sign that nothing about him followed the usual script. His form attracted the attention of Atlanta, a historic club in Argentina’s third tier. Martínez scored 12 goals, helped them climb the standings, and soon found work across the border in Paraguay’s top flight. There, with Sol de América, he stunned everyone—becoming the team’s top scorer and earning a transfer to Club Libertad, one of the country’s biggest clubs.At 27, Martínez finally lived the dream of every South American footballer: he played in the Copa Libertadores. And he didn’t just play—he scored three goals in a single match.

From there, his journey continued: He signed with another major Paraguayan side, Cerro Porteño, and had a short spell in Brazil with Coritiba. Neither stint made headlines—but by the time he was almost 30, Martínez finally returned home to Argentina. For the first time ever, he would play in Argentina’s top division, wearing the shirt of Instituto—a club returning to the Primera after nearly two decades.And Martínez didn’t waste the opportunity.He scored 16 goals that season, including in the fierce Córdoba derby, against Independiente, Racing, and—most memorably—at La Bombonera, against Boca Juniors.

After that dream season, Martínez secured a move to the biggest club of his career: Racing Club, La Academia. By now, he was 31 years old. A man who never joined a youth academy (unheard of in Argentina), who only played amateur football at 17, and didn’t begin his real career until 21, in a local team run by his own mother.A man who survived a wrongful arrest and brutal high-security prison,regained full use of his injured arm after endless hours of physiotherapy,overcame poverty, rejection, and stigma and yet, made it all the way to the top flight.

At Racing, he scored a hat-trick against San Lorenzo, two more against Newell’s, and then experienced something few footballers ever do:He became the hero of the Avellaneda clásico, one of the fiercest derbies in world football—Independiente vs Racing. After a brilliant team move involving the supremely talented (but erratic) Juanfer Quintero, the battle-hardened Bruno Zuculini, and Martínez himself, he scored the winning goal.Adrián Martínez is now in the best form of his life. A true winner in life.