‘It’s interesting,” says Catarina Macario, who returned to action at the start of March, making her Chelsea debut after 20 months out of the game with an anterior cruciate knee ligament injury. “Before the injury I’d be really nervous before big games: ‘I don’t want to mess up, I just want to be able to, like, perform well for my team.’
“Sometimes I almost got too much in my own head to the point that I wouldn’t be able to perform, really. But I feel like now, since the injury, I’m just grateful to be on the pitch again and just to have legs.”
The next big game in question is the Continental League Cup final against Arsenal at Molineux on Sunday, which could kickstart Chelsea’s charge towards a historic quadruple. “I know that it’s a big game, but I personally don’t really think about it that way any more.
“You’re supposed to do the work for it before you get to this point, so let’s just have some fun.”
The 20 long months out, one of the longer stretches that a player has been sidelined with an ACL injury, halted a steady and impressive rise and an unrelenting focus on football. Macario’s family swapped São Luís for Brasília for her mother’s job when she was seven.
When she was 12 and no longer able to play with the boys, her father moved her and her brother to San Diego so she could continue her development in the more conducive United States, while her surgeon mother supported the family from Brazil’s capital.
After breaking the scoring record of the youth Elite Clubs National League, Macario earned a scholarship to Stanford University and won the MAC Hermann Trophy twice but would forgo her senior year to sign for Europe’s premier club, Lyon.
Macario scored 28 times in 44 games for Lyon across two seasons but suffered her ACL injury in the final game of the 2021-22 season. She was sidelined for a year and joined Chelsea still injured last summer. “Football has always just been a big, big part of my life,” says the 24-year-old forward.
“It’s something that I knew I wanted to do from when I was young, it almost felt like it was something I was destined to do. Being out for two years, I was like: ‘Oh, shoot, maybe this is not what is meant for me, maybe that’s not what God’s plan is for me.’
“I’ve always had high expectations of myself, my family has always had high expectations of me and so have other people. I still do have those expectations but it just feels like a miracle that I’m playing. So, I’ll just take it day by day and enjoy the little moments, being with my teammates, doing little passes, things like that, that’s the fun stuff.”
The Chelsea manager, Emma Hayes, told her to take her time and that she had been recruited for the long term, but coming into a club injured was still a difficult experience.
“You really miss building those special bonding moments with your teammates, which you can only really get when you’re outside on the pitch. It was hard.” She only saw “a tiny glimpse” of the work done by the medical and physio team at Chelsea.
“I honestly couldn’t even tell you how many hours they’ve spent trying to get it right for me. Our head of performance one day told me: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time focused on one player, but we’re doing this just to try to get it right for you so that you can be healthy in the long term, and be able to contribute for us.’ That’s something that I really appreciate, and I honestly could never repay them. I did at times think: ‘Will I be able to play at that level again?’ There were definitely a lot of doubts. They just reassured me a lot.
“A lot of times I didn’t believe them. That’s why now everything just feels like a dream, like a miracle.”
Macario spent time with her family, explored London and is trying to start a book club among her teammates. The game that dominated her life has been put in perspective and her return has come with a renewed joy.
Hayes had said the versatile forward would be worth the wait, and she was not wrong. Macario scored two goals in her first two substitute appearances at the start of March, and has provided two assists from the bench.
“I can’t even explain how grateful I am for the club and for my teammates,” she says.
“My first game back I was able to score and you could see the joy in everyone. That meant so much. Even though we had trained together for a while, it felt like such a big celebration. It really was such a genuine moment and so emotional too that I could literally not imagine being part of another team.”
Macario’s role as the season reaches its climax is increasingly important but, despite the absence of Sam Kerr and Mia Fishel, who have suffered ACL injuries themselves, the depth of Chelsea’s squad means there has been no rush to play 90 minutes.
She is unlikely to start against Arsenal, a rerun of last season’s final which Chelsea lost 3-1, but Macario will feature and she knows the stakes. “It is a big derby, I guess it would be even more special if we were able to win it against Arsenal, but no matter who it’s against, no matter what game, we want to win,” she says.
“I don’t think my teammates need to really tell me how much it means, we’re all competitors and what we want to do every single day is win, compete, dominate and set the Chelsea standard.”
