December 2022. Cata Coll has been off the pitch for ten months due to the worst nightmare for any footballer, a crusader injury. The Balearic concierge meets with her agent, Carlota Planas, to draw up a plan in the final stretch of her recovery.
-Cata, what do you want?
-To be the starting goalkeeper for Barça and the national team -she answers.
-And what are you willing to do?
This conversation would give a 180 degree turn to the career of the FC Barcelona goalkeeper. She was clear about what she wanted and she was willing to do whatever it took. “It was a medium or long-term goal. We had to focus on what we could control, ”she explains to La Vanguardia Planas. Putting yourself in the hands of a nutritionist, a psychologist, double work sessions… The change has been total. “Talent has never been in doubt, but he had to make a change of chip,” he confesses. After standing out at Collerense in her native Mallorca, Barça signed her as a bet for the future and loaned her to Sevilla for a season before incorporating her into the Blaugrana discipline in the summer of 2020. “She has been in such a professional environment relatively recently”, remember plans.
The work has paid off. He returned after 13 long months recovering from a knee injury and, despite the fact that he had only played three league games with Barça and had not yet made his senior debut, he received a call from Jorge Vilda to go to the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. He had assumed that his role would be secondary. That Misa Rodríguez would be the starting goalkeeper for Spain. And so it was until the fateful match against Japan. After that 4-0 scoreline, Jorge Vilda decided to put the Real Madrid goalkeeper on the bench and line up Cata Coll against Switzerland in an eleven that perplexed everyone, including the two goalkeepers, who found out at the same time, two hours before of the match, when the coach sang the line-up.
“He wrote to me at 5 in the morning and told me ‘I’m going to be the starter, freak out,'” recalls his representative. Cata Coll’s pulse never trembles. Neither making his debut with the senior team in the round of 16 of the World Cup, nor conceding an own goal after a few minutes. “Never give up, ever.” Despite her youth, she is a very daring goalkeeper, who takes risks when leaving the ball, with spectacular control of her feet and who is difficult to get out of the game. You will always see her with a smile. “Few things affect her,” they recognize in her environment.
“We continue with the put * plan,” he told Planas as soon as he found out that he was going to start in New Zealand. That plan that they drew up on a cold day in December and that has led the Balearic soccer player to the gates of a World Cup final. “It has been a hard road. There are days when you come back from a double session and you are tired and want to throw in the towel and then I told him ‘follow the plan,’ ”explains Planas, his great support these months. “I told her that I would go to the World Cup and she told me that she was crazy,” he recalls.
This Sunday (12:00 pm), against England, Cata Coll could play her third World Cup final at the age of 22. In 2018, she experienced both sides of the coin. In August she lived the cross, losing in the final of the U-20 World Cup against Japan with a goal from the current Golden Boot of the absolute World Cup, Hinata Miyazawa. But in December she would taste glory. With Toña Is’ under-17s, Spain won its first world title in the women’s category. Cata Coll was awarded a Gold Glove sharing a team with Claudia Pina (Golden Ball) or Salma Paralluelo, among others. Tomorrow you can continue making history.
