Cata Coll’s Olympic dreams

At 23 years of age, Cata Coll is facing one of her greatest challenges as a footballer: the Olympic Games in Paris. The Olympic Games will be historic for the Mallorcan goalkeeper as well as for the rest of her teammates. The 2024 Games will be the first time that the Spanish Women's Football Team will take part in the tournament.

For Cata Coll, the last year has been the stuff of dreams. The FC Barcelona goalkeeper has won six titles in the last 12 months: La Liga, Champions League, Copa de la Reina and Spanish Super Cup with her club and the FIFA World Cup and UEFA Women's Nations League with the Spanish national team.

Both this summer's Olympic Games and next year's Women's European Championships are two of the challenges still to be added to the Balearic player's list of honours. For Cata, "the Games are a dream for every player" and, after watching them from the sofa at home with her father, in France she will be able to fulfil her wish to experience them from the inside: "To be at the Games is something impossible to imagine".

The player from Pòrtol (Mallorca), who made her debut with the national youth team in 2016 when she was just 15 years old, now returns with the national team to the place where she played her first international tournament: the Czech Republic. There, in 2017, she played in the European Under-17 Championships, where Spain finished as runners-up. A year later, in 2018, she won the World and European Championships with the U-17 national team in Uruguay and Lithuania respectively.

Her aim, and that of the national team, is to complete a perfect qualifying campaign for EURO Switzerland 2025 by winning both of their remaining matches: on Friday 12 against Czech Republic in Chomutov and on Tuesday 16 against Belgium in La Coruña. Once both matches are over, the internationals will be able to focus 100% on their Olympic tournament opener against Japan.

As usually happens on these occasions, Cata Coll has made a bold promise in the event that the Spanish national team wins a medal in Paris: "If we win a medal, I will get a tattoo of the Olympic rings".