“Dad, I’m going to be the starter,” echoed through Fernando Coll’s phone at five in the morning. It was not usual for her daughter to call at that time, and she was scared when she saw Cata’s name on the screen. They had just returned from New Zealand after watching three games in which Misa Rodríguez had occupied the goal in the 2023 World Cup. But the surprise came for Cata Coll (Mallorca, 23 years old): the coach at that time, Jorge Vilda, who knew well to the young woman from the lower categories, he chose the Mallorcan to be a starter from the round of 16 after also leaving Sandra Paños off the list despite having sent an email to be called up after being part of 15. Cata had barely played with his club after an injury. It was the beginning of a reward for his efforts. And it had only just begun.
The World Cup also catapulted her into Barcelona. This season—in which she has played 24 games—she has won in the most important matches against the veteran Paños, who will leave the club at the end of the season. Cata, when she plays as a starter, keeps telling her parents about it. Against Olympique Lyon, this Saturday in the Champions League final (18.00, La 1 and DAZN) the most likely thing is that he will occupy the goal, and his performance will be more fundamental than ever against a team that will put them in much more trouble than the usual ones. “Cata is a great goalkeeper. Despite her young age, she has a lot of confidence in her game, she has played important things: playing in the final of a World Cup is not just anything. And she did it very well, too. I think she has grown a lot in the last year,” confessed Christiane Endler, Lyon’s rival goalkeeper.
Not long ago he tattooed 2023 on his skin. “She started very badly, and ended very well. From wanting to throw in the towel to touch the sky,” she confessed in a meeting with the media before the last classic about that moment. “This year has been spectacular. You know that she has fought for it, and that she has been unlucky enough to get injured when she was already on the road. It was complicated, wanting to be there and not being able to,” confesses the Mallorcan woman’s father. In February 2022 he tore the cruciate ligament in his left knee during training with Barcelona, and it did not reappear until March 2023. “The injury was necessary to mature, to learn, to know what is lost and to value things. Today I am the person I am because of what I went through,” Cata recently confessed. For his father, the hardest moment was his transition during his recovery: “They were moments of frustration and weakness. The time is very long, separated from your home, and from your team. She had doubts whether she would be at the same level again.”
But Cata made a plan with her agent, Carlota Planas, in a cafeteria near the Ciudad Deportiva. “What do you want, Cata?” Planas asked. “Being a starter for Barça and the national team,” she confessed. Her agent made it clear: “Let’s go for it.” And the plan worked. In addition to his effort, his personality also played an important role. She is charismatic, with a rebellious touch—her ability to dribble past rival forwards has already been demonstrated—and with a character that has matured and moderated over time, those who work with her agree. “When they tell her not to do something, she goes and does it for three,” confesses Planas. Cata is transparent, and although she seems crazy, she likes to have some things under control, always with her characteristic spontaneity, shared by those who know her. On the back of her neck there is another tattoo: Congratulations on the perill (Happy near danger, in Catalan). “If she goes hiking, she has to go over the cliff. She likes risk. She wants to experiment and try everything. She does not suffer from that vertigo,” explains her father. And they also consider that she is the soul of the party: at the League celebration a video of her sliding through a river of champagne inside the locker room went around the networks, where she is in great harmony with the youngest players like Salma Paralluelo.
A character that she has kept since she was little. But before soccer, Cata started basketball, although she only lasted a few months, her father confesses. “It was pure activity. When she was little, she didn’t know how to watch a movie: it lasted five minutes, she got tired and got up,” explains Fernando. So they took her to practice tennis. “At first she was crying, because she wanted to play soccer with her friends, and then we signed her up. When she was six years old, she alternated between both sports until the calls came with the national team,” she adds. At home, the dining room and the television cabinet were a tennis court and a goal, with her father throwing balls at her from the seat.
That little “earthquake” grew over time to become World Champion with the absolute and under-17 teams, where she also won the European title. “In everyone’s eyes she is the starting goalkeeper, but now come years of consolidation for her. Surely it hasn’t been easy for her that Paños doesn’t play, but she has handled it very well considering how young he is,” club employees explain. The figure of Paños has helped her mature, and it has made her “a better goalkeeper”, always with “healthy competition”. “The experience I have is thanks to her, it has always been a mirror,” Cata confessed last March. This Saturday, it is most likely that she will face Olympique Lyonnais in what will be her first Champions League final in the Barça eleven. No matter the pressure: Cata is very happy around danger.
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