Barcelona v Inter Milan: Lautaro Martinez’s rise to the top

“Have you got your bags packed already?”

Whenever they met, Lionel Messi would joke with Lautaro Martinez, asking if his Argentina team-mate would be joining him at Barcelona.

It was early 2020, and Barca were on the lookout for a replacement for Luis Suarez, with Martinez having become their top target for the following season.

Messi was an integral part of the whole operation to lure the Inter Milan forward to the Camp Nou.

At some point, it looked like the deal was pretty much done – but then came the Covid-19 pandemic and suddenly it fell through.

Martinez did not move from San Siro and, five years on, has made Inter his team – hitting at least 20 goals in each of the past four seasons and breaking one record after another.

He is now the Nerazzurri’s all-time leading scorer in the Champions League with 18 goals, becoming the first player to score in five consecutive matches for the team in the tournament and is currently only one goal away from equalling Hernan Crespo (nine goals in 2002-03) as the club’s top-scorer in a single edition of the competition.

That all has been enough to cement Lautaro’s place among Inter’s legends, but the 27-year-old is aiming for more as he heads to the Camp Nou on Wednesday to face Barcelona in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals.

Not only does he want to win the only major trophy that he still lacks, but also prove that he deserves more recognition than he has received so far in his career.

“Sometimes, I do feel underrated, yes,” he admitted to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera after finishing in seventh position in the 2024 Ballon d’Or award.

He is not alone in thinking that.

Those who have known Martinez since his first steps in Argentine football with Liniers and Racing share the same thoughts.

“If Lautaro did the same thing for Manchester United or Tottenham, he would be talked about more, after all, it’s the Premier League,” former Racing scout Diego Huerta told BBC Sport.

“So I don’t think it’s because of Lautaro – it’s because he plays for Inter.

“They already reached the Champions League final [against Manchester City] in 2023, with him as one of their standout players, and yet he doesn’t get the same spotlight that others do. What he did, for example, at last year’s Copa América [being top-scorer] was incredible.”

What’s missing then? His strike partner, Marcus Thuram, has suggested that Martinez should “smile a bit more”. If that’s the issue, leading Inter to the title would certainly help with that.