Everything Catarina Macario touches turns to gold! World-class USWNT star already making up for lost time at Chelsea following 22-month ACL injury rehab
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Twenty-two months on the sidelines meant Catarina Macario took a little longer than she’d have liked to introduce herself to the Chelsea fans but after two goals in two games, the United States women’s national team star is certainly making up for lost time.
Macario was only six minutes into her Chelsea debut when she marked it with a goal, a clever finish putting the cherry on the cake for the Blues in a 4-0 win over Leicester at the start of the month, one that saw them return to the top of the Women’s Super League table.
A week later, she repeated the trick, except she did it even better. It was a little over an hour into Chelsea’s FA Cup quarter-final against Everton when she entered the fray, the scores goalless and her side seriously struggling to break down the Toffees. But within three minutes, that all changed. Aggie Beever-Jones drove into the box, Macario peeled off her marker and the England youngster teed her up for a simple, match-winning finish.
The mathematics from the Chelsea fans suggest that, at this rate, if Macario features in Friday’s huge WSL clash with London rivals Arsenal, she’ll be on the scoresheet within 90 seconds. Such a prediction is ambitious, but it also wouldn’t be a huge surprise. After suffering on the sidelines for almost two years, everything Macario touches seems to turn to gold right now – and the timing could not be better for Chelsea.
It was way back on June 1, 2022, that Macario suffered the ACL rupture that would leave her out of action for so long. It was in the final match of Lyon’s season; a frustratingly meaningless game given the title was already wrapped up. It would be another year before the forward left the club but she’d do so without representing them again.
When Hayes snapped up Macario last summer, she admittedly didn’t think it would take until March of this year for her to make her Chelsea debut. But to sign the American when she was sidelined with a serious injury showed how much faith the manager had in her talent and in Chelsea’s medical team. And she is reaping the rewards for that belief now.
But the mental strength shown by Macario needs to be spotlighted, too. To battle for 22 months to come back from such an injury is incredible. To think you are nearly at the finish line, only to be dealt a setback, and then bounce back and keep working and come through the other side showcases the mentality of a champion.
It’s perhaps no surprise. After all, this someone who has represented Lyon, a player who has scored in – and won – a Champions League final. Moreover, this is a player whose family relocated from Brazil to the United States when she was a young girl so that she could be a success in the sport she loved.
“Soccer was the main reason,” Macario told GOAL on All of US: The U.S. Women’s Soccer Show about her family’s move. Asked if that pressure weighed on her, she said: “Definitely. Being a 12-year-old girl and you know that your family’s doing this really thinking about you and almost seeing you as an investment to your future? It definitely took a toll at times.”
Those circumstances do not make it any less impressive to see Macario bounce back in the manner that she has so far, though. “It’s so much harder than people think,” Hayes said of her comeback. “We talk about players being out maybe six months, nine months, but 22 months? I think there’s been some really difficult days for her. Put yourself in her shoes – injured last year, signs for a new club, not available for that club until now. She wants to give to the team as much as she can. She came to us broken and we almost had to do a lot of things all over again.
“She never had an easy rehab so therefore not only was it not quick to return, but she had some issues with her cartilage that needed addressing, she had some other issues that we needed to address and sometimes you get those setbacks. You think someone’s coming back, and you get another delay. She’s learned some different things, I think, along this way, about herself and what she’s needed to do.
“We had a conversation about it today. I am a coach that values the 22 hours. Training is one thing but the top professionals master the 22 hours off the pitch and we’ve been teaching her how to do that – lifestyle, sleep, eat, all of it that comes together to help her perform and I think she’s picking up how best to do all of those things.
“I know that this is the beginning of a career with us and psychologically, she’s in the best place she’s been in because if you take football away from a footballer, naturally it causes a lot. But I think injured players when they are with injured players, there’s such a support network. When Lucy Watson was injured with her, they built a really good friendship.
”That has really, really helped and I think the team have been really gentle with her coming back, because of course she stepped onto the pitch in January and everyone is like, ‘Oh, new signing, let her play!’ But I’m the sort of coach who is like, ‘No’. I listen to my medical team, we’ve had to go hand in hand to get the loading right, she trusted the process, we’ve laid the plan out, we revisit the plan again and again, there’s so much work that goes on and here we are. We have Cat Macario back.”
Macario herself has talked about how much she has valued Hayes’ patience, telling Sky Sports: “Honestly, Emma has been tremendous. She’s been so supportive during this whole time, not pressuring me to come back or anything, which is kind of rare. No one wants to come into a club injured but she’s been honestly tremendous. I couldn’t have asked for a better manager. I tribute a lot to her and the whole staff really.”
And the way that the whole Chelsea team has got around her, as Hayes says, has played a huge part in helping her along with her recovery as well. “I think you saw the reaction of everyone connected to the team. Players, staff, everybody was absolutely delighted for her,” the manager said of Macario’s return earlier this month. “She’s a super character, she really is, and ever since she came into this club, I think the dressing room really took her in as one of their own.
“Even today, she bought a cake for everyone to celebrate everybody putting up with her. There was just a large cake with a big picture of herself on it that we had to cut through. It said, ‘Thank you for putting up with me during this’. It’s been a long battle and her teammates have been tremendous in helping her through that. But the staff, this is the work that people don’t see, that the medical team do and the performance team do. That’s why it’s important to mention it.”
All of this has contributed to the results on the pitch this month. Macario’s world-class talent is starting to shine through in the glimpses we’ve seen of her in Chelsea blue and she appears to be growing in confidence, too.
After marking those 18 minutes against Leicester with a goal, the USWNT forward was a game-changer in the half an hour she played against Everton.
It wasn’t just about her clever movement that produced the match-winning goal, it was also her running with the ball, the belief with which she drove at defenders and the physicality and skill she showed to regularly beat them. “She is such a good player,” Hayes said. “You can see that already.”
Macario’s comeback could not be better timed, either. At the start of the year, Chelsea lost star striker Sam Kerr to the same ACL injury that kept her American team-mate out for so long. A month later, Mia Fishel, the USWNT forward who was recruited as back-up for Kerr, suffered the same setback.
Chelsea did strengthen in the January window after the Kerr news, paying a then-world-record fee for Levante striker Mayra Ramirez. But the Colombian is still adapting to life in England. Indeed, she limped off in Thursday’s Continental Cup semi-final win over Manchester City and didn’t feature against Everton on Sunday. Macario offers necessary depth in the front line and in various positions then, giving Hayes more flexibility and options despite the absentees.
“She can clearly play a 9, a 10, a 7, an 11 with her eyes shut,” the Chelsea manager said this month, asked by GOAL just how much of an asset that versatility can be. “I like her down the middle, I like her centrally. Mayra, too, is coming from another country where they rarely play three games in a week with this intensity so it’s going to be hard for Mayra to maintain that alone and I think Cat will help ease some of that. I think Aggie could do some of that as well for us. I feel confident with the group we’ve got and I look forward to whatever cameo Cat plays in this first part [of her Chelsea career].”
This opening chapter of Macario’s story with Chelsea isn’t a quiet one. She’s back not just in time to soften the blow of some big injuries but also to contribute to the business end of the season, with her team still in four competitions as the run-in begins.
Chelsea are currently top of the WSL, they’re in the Conti Cup final, the FA Cup semi-finals (thanks to Macario) and the quarter-finals of the Champions League. There are a lot of important games coming and Macario is ready to make her mark in them.
And this is just the first chapter. There will be many more to follow and the suggestions from these opening pages are that they will be exciting. “I can tell the Chelsea fans this,” Hayes told Sky Sports this month. “I’m leaving you a super player and I hope she plays a big part for the remainder of the season but long-term, Chelsea have got an absolutely world-class forward – and so do USA.”
