Lautaro Martínez explains why he still can't stop watching his goal against England at the 2026 World Cup

Some goals are scored once but celebrated forever. Lautaro Martínez's goal against England in the semifinal of the 2026 World Cup is one of those, and the striker himself admits it without hesitation: he still watches it, over and over, as if he still can't quite believe it happened.

The "Toro" came on in the 81st minute, with Argentina trailing 1-0. Shortly after, Enzo Fernández leveled the score, and then, deep into stoppage time, came the moment that will never be forgotten: a cross from Lionel Messi that Martínez met with a header to make it 2-1, the final score. That win sent the national team into its second straight final, though the story took a different turn from there, as they fell to Spain 1-0 in extra time.

But this piece isn't about that final. It's about that specific goal, the one against England, which holds a place of its own in Martínez's memory. He spoke about it himself in an interview with the Argentine Football Association, and he did so with a striking honesty, admitting that he didn't even grasp in the moment what he had just set in motion.

I've watched it so many times, I still watch it. I have videos saved on my phone. It's a goal that's going to stay with me for the rest of my life. I got to score one of the most important goals in the history of the Argentine national team.Lautaro Martínez

The Inter Milan captain, a World Cup winner with Argentina in 2022, explained that he didn't feel the real weight of that play on the field or in the locker room. The context of the match against England, with a rivalry that goes far beyond soccer, already gave it a special edge. But as he tells it, the adrenaline of being just days away from a final buried everything else.

Maybe I wasn't fully aware of the goal I had just scored in that moment. I knew what it meant at that stage of the match, but afterward we were all so caught up in the intensity of everything, because we were playing a final in three or four days, that I forgot about it.Lautaro Martínez

He says he only understood the true scale of the moment once he was back in Argentina. Before reaching Buenos Aires, he had to stop in Rome to play his last match with Inter, spend a night there, and go out to lunch with his family before catching his flight. It was on that trip home, surrounded by people, that it started to sink in.

He recalled running into Argentines who thanked him not just for what the team had achieved together, but specifically for that goal. He mentioned an older woman who told him it had been a long time since she had screamed like that for a national team goal. Encounters like that one, he explained, were what finally showed him the place that header now holds in the recent history of Argentine soccer.