Sandra Paños was indisputable in the Barcelona goal. But the explosion of Cata Coll – until this year the team’s second goalkeeper – coincided with her last season as a blaugrana from Alicante, aged 31. And the roles were exchanged. Emblem of the culé goal, Paños faces her last four official matches at the club. Two of them, great finals. The first will be the match against Natalia Arroyo’s Real Sociedad tomorrow, Saturday (at 7:00 p.m., La 1) in the last step of the Queen’s Cup.
And it is very likely that Sandra Paños will be the starting goal. The coach, Jonatan Giráldez, has not reported the starting eleven, but the club has decided that she will be the player who will show her face today, along with the coach, in the pre-match press conference. A great last final in Barcelona, the icing on the cake of nine years of collective success. A great farewell, especially if she does not play in the Champions League final on the 25th in San Mamés, an apparently more favorable scenario for Cata Coll’s lineup.
Until this season, Paños’ ownership was undoubted, impeccable in the last Champions League, where the Blaugrana won the second European trophy for Barcelona in Eindhoven, and where she claimed to be one of the great goalkeepers in the world. He finished the season with 31 of the 44 games played, and there was no doubt about the name that occupied the three goalposts. She worked on his mental health, and he was in a great personal moment. “Next to me I have two great goalkeepers, very young and with a lot of projection,” he commented last year. But this season – despite having played 18 of 44 games – has gone wrong for Paños, as it has been Cata Coll who has taken on the most important matches. Although the duel in goal was not forged in Barcelona, but in Las Rozas. Many months before, when Sandra—she was one of the 15 who rebelled against the Red federation system—was left out of the pre-list of the then coach Jorge Vilda for the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, last summer. And in the team’s last major tournaments she had been a starter.
It was then that Coll, who had barely played 195 minutes for Barcelona after his cruciate ligament injury, ended up taking the starting job from Misa Rodríguez, consolidating himself as the life insurance of the Spanish team. And shortly after at Barça. Because Paños’ absence in Sydney ended up conditioning his future as a Barça player.
At the beginning of this season, it seemed that Jonatan Giráldez opted for the more Solomonic option: both alternated games at the beginning. The first of the course fell on the side of Cata Coll. And in the most important and decisive matches, such as the Champions League or the classics, it was also the Mallorcan who occupied the goal.
“I have matured a lot with Paños, he has made me a better goalkeeper and we have a very healthy competition. She demands of me, I demand of her and this means that we both arrive at the game in our best condition. The experience I have now is thanks to her. She has always been a mirror,” Cata confessed last March.
Two months earlier, Paños had announced his goodbye. In the middle of an injury to his left calf – for which he was out for almost a month – before the Super Cup final against Levante on January 20, he announced his departure from June 30. After nine seasons at the Barça club. “I have been a participant in the transformation of women’s football,” he began his speech in a farewell video. “There are times when it is time to look for new concerns and new challenges, and it is time to do it. (…) Closing the cycle by winning the four titles would be the ideal exit,” added the goalkeeper.
Since then, Paños has taken over as goalkeeper. “For me it is a pleasure to continue enjoying games, there are fewer of them, but I am happy to be able to enjoy my teammates and the fans. It is complicated (managing the substitution). You have to fight every day to earn a starting position and try to push so that the rest of the teammates raise the level,” said the third captain after a match last April. At the end of June, she will leave the club where she has grown as a footballer and has marked an era. “We will have time to say goodbye as we deserve,” she said in a statement. This season she has played 18 games, with eight goals conceded, while Gemma Font – who has announced her relationship with Barça until 2025 – has only played two, and Cata the remaining 24.
A great record
Since Paños arrived at the Barça club in the summer of 2015, he has played 277 games, with 170 clean sheets and only 141 goals conceded. And he has accumulated 21 titles in his entire career with the Barça shirt, which could be two more if the team’s wishes of taking the Queen’s Cup and the long-awaited Champions League to Barcelona are fulfilled. In Zaragoza, tomorrow, he could be a starter —he already played in the semifinals of the national tournament; Cata played the quarterfinals and Gemma the eighths—; while in Bilbao, a week later, it is most likely that Cata will be chosen by Giráldez to defend the Barça goal for the European Cup.
Thus, if the forecasts are accurate, tomorrow will be the grand final as a Barça player for a club legend with a track record that measures the dedication to the team of his life.
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