Catalina Usme has lived, in more than 12 years of career, all the evolution of women’s football in Colombia. At some point, when things were not moving forward, his brother, Andrés, suggested that he leave the sport and start studying. Energetic and firm, as in every step of her life, Catalina replied: “I will have my whole life to study. For soccer, no,” she told him. And she bad she has not gone.
Now, at 32 years old, she is ready to pursue one of her pending dreams, to fight for the title of the Copa América Femenina with the Colombian National Team. She already has many individual achievements to show, such as that of the highest scorer in the Colombian Women’s League, with 55 goals (a tournament that did not exist until 2017 and that with her drive and that of her generation companions became a reality).
In addition, Usme is the all-time top scorer in the women’s Copa Libertadores, with 29 goals (19 with Formas Íntimas, 4 with Santa Fe and 6 with América), although she insists that for her, the collective achievement is above the individual and that is why , in October, will try again.
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And with the Colombian National Team, she is also at the head of the historical table of gunners, with 37 goals. But she knows that is not enough.
“I think that Cata, apart from being a great athlete, talented as a player, is a great leader: with her example she bears a great responsibility and assumes it that way. She is an example for the other girls, as a soccer player and as a leader. She has a great vocation, she draws the group a lot, ”says Andrés, today the coach of América de Cali, a team that became Catalina’s home.
Born in Marinilla (Antioquia), soccer was breathed at home. To such an extent that her father, José Domingo, had already given her first two children, Diego and Carlos Andrés, a soccer ball as their first gift.
“I think that Cata, apart from being a great athlete, talented as a player, is a great leader: with her example she carries a great responsibility and assumes it that way”.
When they were doing an ultrasound on her mother, Luz Marina Pineda, to find out the sex of the baby that was about to arrive, they asked José Domingo if he also had the ball ready. He said yes. What if it was a girl? “Well, she’s going to play soccer too.” She was clear.
At the age of 5, he was already kicking the ball with his brothers and went every Sunday to see his father play. And so, little by little, she was integrating teams in her hometown, until she got tired of playing against the boys and asked where there was a women’s team.
The answer was in Medellín. Formas Intimas worked there, one of the pioneer teams of women’s soccer in Colombia, that today, by agreement, plays the professional league with the colors of Deportivo Independiente Medellín.
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The sacrifice was great. Every day, Catalina traveled the 27 kilometers between Marinilla and Medellín to go to training. She then went to live in the capital of Antioquia and, since soccer was not enough for everything, she had to work.
She came to do shifts as a waitress, in which she was paid 400 thousand pesos fortnightly. From there he would leave at three in the afternoon for training in Intimate Forms. And then, to earn a few more pesos, 16,000 per shift, in a chain store, doing inventories.
And also, when he began to make a name for himself in soccer, he received a scholarship to study at the Jaime Isaza Cadavid Polytechnic, with the goal of becoming a professional in sports. And there, the journey was extended: at 6 in the morning he left his house on his bicycle, studied and then followed the rest of the routine. He closed the day with another return trip, also by bicycle. An exhausting pace.
“It was a rough journey, almost an hour of travel: I went out to study, trained, came back, trained again, it was a heavy rhythm. For her, this was never a problem. If something sums up what Cata is, it is discipline, she is the most disciplined woman I know, she is always looking for a better version, she always wants more, it has been like her diary, ”recalled Andrés, her brother.
In 2006 she was summoned for the first time to a Colombian National Team, the Sub-20 that participated in the South American Championship in Chile. And four years later he was already part of the senior team, in which, little by little, a generation was arriving that today is still represented in the team, such as Sandra Sepúlveda, Daniela Montoya, Tatiana Ariza, and others who also passed with great brilliance, like Yoreli Rincón and Natalia Gaitán.
That group obtained the first qualification for a Women’s World Cup, in 2010, by finishing second in the Copa América in Ecuador. And she also qualified for the 2012 London Olympics, a tournament that represented the first big break in Catalina’s career.
When he was competing for his first Olympics, Usme suffered a serious injury: he tore the anterior cruciate ligament and the medial meniscus of his right knee. She lasted a year off the courts and returned just to play the women’s Copa Libertadores again with Intimate Forms, the first time that Colombia was close to the title. The team reached the final, which it lost to São José, from Brazil, 3-1.
Usme’s career seemed to get back on track, but in August 2014 he suffered another blow, which could be definitive for his career. While training with Intimate Forms in Guarne, he again tore ligaments in his right leg. In the 2012 injury, the Colombian Football Federation covered the costs of the operation and physiotherapy. This time, Catalina was helpless: as it was not a professional team, she did not have an employment contract and therefore there was no way to do the surgery.
But Catalina has an angel. Mauricio Palacio, a doctor at the Medellín clinic in El Poblado, found out about her case and called her. He offered to operate on her at no cost. And a physiotherapist, Andrea Katich, took charge of his recovery, also for free.
Without Catalina, the Colombian National Team qualified for the 2015 World Cup in Canada. That was a motivation for her recovery. He set himself the goal of being on coach Felipe Taborda’s list. Many considered his career finished, and the most optimistic gave him a term of a year and a half to return. He did it in three months.
Catalina trained harder than ever. If her companions did it in a single day, she did it in double shift. She even overexerted herself and more than once she ended up vomiting on the Federation courts. She didn’t want to give any advantage.
From the teeth out, Usme was very strong. “My recovery has been satisfactory, both physically and mentally. The process went smoothly, it really was easy. Being here again is very exciting because it was something I thought about, ”he told EL TIEMPO in March 2015, three months before the World Cup.
It was worth the effort. Taborda included her in the final list for Canada 2015. And Catalina responded better than ever. In their first World Cup participation, in Germany 2011, Colombia did not score goals and only earned one point.
Four years later, Colombia exceeded expectations. He achieved his first and, so far, only World Cup victory, beating France 2-0, a team that had just been semi-finalists four years earlier. The second goal, which sealed the win, was scored by Usme. After a bad rejection of the French goalkeeper. Diana Carolina Ospina took the ball and left Catalina ready to score.
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Professional soccer was not yet in the plans in the country and many of the players alternated competition with futsal. One of them was Catalina, who even came to play for the National Team, and with great success: in 2015 she was part of the team that won the Copa América of the specialty, in Uruguay.
The group suffered a severe blow when it was eliminated from the 2019 World Cup in France and in the Colombian Football Federation they came to think of starting from scratch: Álvaro González Alzate, vice president of the entity, came to propose the return of the U-23 National Team and to return to a semi-professional league.
Fortunately, neither of the two ideas prospered and the National Team had its revenge, winning its first title, at the Pan American Games in Lima, in 2019. Catalina scored two goals, in the semifinal against Costa Rica and in the final against Argentina.
Little by little, Usme gained international recognition and now, for the Copa América that begins tomorrow in Cali, he is one of the stars of the tournament. The international media, for several years, have it in orbit.
The newspaper Olé, in January of this year, asked her what she would say to those who tell her that they want to be like her. Cata was blunt: “No! They can’t be like me, they have to be better. I believe that times evolve, change and we did not have all the possibilities that they are going to have. They have to take advantage of them and part of that is to overcome the people they had as references”.
Jose Orlando Ascencio
Sports Sub-Editor
@josasc
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