Lyon’s Catarina Macario: ‘Choosing Europe was for moments like this’

The journey of the striker Catarina Macario from the Brazilian city of São Luís to a first Champions League final with the seven-times winners Lyon has been long but not surprising to those familiar with her remarkable backstory.

Macario is used to making bold decisions to further her steady and goal-laden rise. Her family had swapped São Luís for Brasília for her mother’s job as a surgeon when she was seven and, when Macario was 12 and no longer allowed to play with boys, her father decided to split the family. He, Macario and her brother Steve moved to San Diego in the US so she could play while her mother supported the family from afar.

It was a risk, with Steve the only one able to speak English, but it paid off. Macario broke the scoring record in the Elite Clubs National League with the youth side San Diego Surf and earned the scholarship that propelled her rise.

When she decided to forgo her senior year at Stanford University to sign with Lyon, having won the NCAA Women’s College Cup in her freshman and junior years and twice won the MAC Hermann Trophy, awarded to the nation’s best player, it followed a pattern of change and adaptation she has become used to.

“Choosing to go to Europe was definitely based on wanting to play in moments like these, wanting to compete for a Champions League,” she says before Saturday’s final in Turin against the holders, Barcelona.

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“So, the fact that we’re doing it is incredibly special. It means that I made a good decision. It’s been working out so far. I just wanted to play with the best of the best and be with them every single day in training and playing against them.”

This final is “set up to be one of the biggest Champions League