It is not easy to sleep the ball with your left foot as Catalina Usme (Marinilla, 33 years old) does. And less in the rival area to gently define the inner edge, overcoming a defender’s hold, in the round of 16 of a World Cup, with a full stadium, in a tight match and the score at zero. It requires the tranquility and maturity that distinguishes the talented from the stars to give that “pass to the network” —as she tells her teammates from América de Cali when they train— and open the doors of the unprecedented. She also needs, in her case, a lot of stubbornness to overcome over and over again the obstacles that have appeared throughout her life.
Andrés Usme (Marinilla, 39 years old) is the older brother of the scorer. After the game against Jamaica, when everything was hype and illusion, she called him. “How did you see it?” she asked him. He proceeded to tell her what she liked about her and what she didn’t, and gave her advice. While the Colombians got up early to see the round of 16 key and celebrated Catalina’s goal wildly, Andrés tried to control his excitement and shouting, and dedicated himself to watching the ninety minutes through the eyes of a coach. He is the technical director of the Ecuadorian women’s team, a position he fought for and reached thanks to a path he traveled along with his sister, Colombia’s number 11.
“I learned to handle that exaltation of victory and defeat. Before she would scream and cry, it was impressive. Not anymore, I’m more reflective and I see the games from a different perspective because I know that Cata will call me later so we can talk about how he played. There I tell him: ‘Look at this, I corrected this other’. But I’m not going to lie to you: that goal against Jamaica moved me a lot and made me remember his whole process, ”he comments by phone from Quito, with a marked Antioquia accent.
The home of the Usme Pineda in Marinilla, Antioquia, was always very soccer. The family’s preferred plan was to be spectators of the games that José Domingo, the father, played in the tournaments that were held in the town. The whistles that marked halftime and the end of the matches were a signal longed for by the three children —Catalina, Andrés and Diego—, to run onto the field, start a ball rolling and dream that they were playing a world final. Always, when she was still taking her first steps, it was clear that Catalina was going to be a soccer player. There was no precise episode in which they identified the quality of it. She just knew.
But it would be wrong to attribute his success to fate. There were no facilities, especially for women. At the age of eight, she commanded the forward of a men’s team with Diego, a year older than her. She was not long in turning the figure. She always received support from her family, they encouraged her to continue training, and any objections from other people quickly silenced them with what she did on the pitch. Andrés recalls with a laugh that the rival defenders did not give her differential treatment and, on the contrary, tried to stop her in any way possible. He remembers a game in particular. “Cata and Diego were playing. She was totally hooked. I think she had scored a couple of goals that day and a bad one, when the ball was far away, she kicked it. My brother almost went crazy and I had to go in to separate them”.
At the age of 11, around the turn of the century, she was summoned to represent the Marinilla team in Pony Fútbol, a traditional children’s championship that is played annually in Medellín and in which soccer players such as Juan Fernando Quintero and James Rodríguez became known. . The hopes of her team were pinned on her, and so her spirits fell apart when the organizers made the decision not to let her participate. The competition was for men only. There was no commotion or indignation, they were other times. She partially took revenge, years later, when the championship opened its female branch and she, together with Andrés, led the youth team of Deportivo Independiente Medellín in that same tournament. She was able to witness how other girls enjoyed the opportunity that she was denied.
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After the rejection, he looked for alternatives and found the Formas Íntimas Sports Club, one of the few that was dedicated to women’s soccer at that time. Her headquarters are in Medellín and Catalina, who was studying high school in Marinilla, put in strenuous hours to keep her passion alive. She woke up early to go to class, she left at noon and boarded a bus that took an hour to take her to the capital of Antioquia. She trained and came home at midnight. That was her commitment to Luz Mary, her mother and her main promoter, who did not let her dedicate herself fully to the sport until she graduated. Many times the family did ropes to get money and be able to pay for the journeys.
This lasted for several years until he finally moved to Medellín. Andrew was waiting for her. “I went there very young to work as a carpenter. When my brothers graduated, they went with me to Medellín. Tasting her soccer, of course: she has never thought of doing anything else in her life. He worked as a waitress, doing inventory, teaching soccer, whatever he needed to support himself. She resigned when there were calls for selection or tournaments, and the day after they were over, she went out to look for work. All that effort to be able to continue playing ”, evokes the oldest of the Usme Pineda.
The Antioquia team set its eyes on her and, in addition to recruiting her, gave her a scholarship to enter the Jaime Isaza Cadavid Colombian Polytechnic. She enrolled in the physical education program, but there was a time when class schedules intersected with her team’s practices. She had to choose and soccer prevailed, as always. “I have my whole life to study,” she explained to Andrés. And she was not wrong.
The second edition of the South American sub 20 championship was played in Viña del Mar, Chile, in January 2006. Catalina, who just turned 16, was summoned to represent the country. “I asked my mom: ‘Are you going to let Cata go that far?’ And she answered me: ‘Sure, don’t you see that you have to support her?’ And she left like that, at that age. We take her to the airport and bye”.
Andrés lovingly keeps the shirts from his sister’s first experiences with the tricolor. He inherited them from her because they looked better on him than on her. Women’s soccer was still so incipient that the Colombian Soccer Federation provided the players with uniforms for men, without last and with sizes well above their corresponding size. Despite the little support and the multiple rudeness, Andrés points out that Catalina has always had a proactive attitude.
After the South American, Usme became a regular in the national lineup and made the leap to the senior category. Sharing a lineup with Yoreli Rincón, Orianica Velásquez and Carmen Rodallega, among others, she was runner-up in the South American Championship in Ecuador in November 2010. Second place guaranteed a place for Colombia in venues it had never reached before: the World Cup, which took place a a year later in Germany, and the London Olympics in 2012. At the latter, Catalina faced the first of two injuries that narrowly left her with no choice but to withdraw.
In it Saint James Park Newcastle played the third game of the group stage, against France. At the end of the first half, Usme came out on a stretcher. The diagnosis was discouraging: torn ligaments. “We cried with sadness that day. My mom, I don’t know how she was going to do it, almost caught a flight to England. Fortunately Cata was able to overcome that and today she is reaping the fruits of that integrity. Then another injury came and, as she is, she stood up again, ”says Andrés. He refers to the break he suffered in 2014, playing with Formas Íntimas against Atlético Nacional. He, who had already established himself as a coach, was directing it and witnessed first-hand what happened when there was only one year to go before the next World Cup. One of the doctors who treated her told her that she could not play again and that, according to Andrés, motivated her. “As soon as they told him: ‘Forget soccer’, oh, God, right there he threw everything into her recovery.” Thus, she traveled to the World Cup in Canada and scored the second goal in Colombia’s first victory, a historic 2-1 victory against France, the same rival against whom she was injured three years earlier.
The first edition of the women’s professional soccer league in the country took place in 2017. Catalina debuted with América de Cali and that is the shirt she has defended ever since, except for a brief stint at Independiente Santa Fe, with which she played the Libertadores Cup. She is a fearsome goalscorer: she has scored 74 goals in 118 professional matches. The women’s league is played in just four months, while the men’s lasts 11. If they had a championship with the same conditions, Catalina Usme’s numbers would very likely be scandalous.
She is the all-time top scorer for the Colombian national team, with 52 goals in 70 games. In the world present she has scored two, the one on the first date against South Korea and the one that converted Jamaica with her left foot in the round of 16. She is the hope of scoring for a team that is achieving the unexpected and is playing the way to the semifinals against the powerful England at dawn this Saturday.
After the coach Nelson Abadía gave the talk before they went out onto the field of the Accor Stadium of Sydney, surely Catalina will take the spokesperson as always and will address her colleagues with the same character that she speaks to the media. “Did you notice when she said that she didn’t give a damn that it was Germany? [el rival en la fase de grupos]? Well, that’s how she is. Nor commanded to do that moment. That is something that characterizes Cata. She is frontal, she does not beat around the bush, she does what she does ”, concludes Andrés excitedly.
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