Stanford soccer star’s goal is to play for Team USA
Brazil-born, California-bred Macario rewrites Cardinal record book
STANFORD » Some are calling Stanford junior Catarina Macario the next face of women’s soccer.
With a school record of 30 goals this year, the Brazilborn, California-bred Macario is being compared to Mia Hamm and Marta, two of history’s greatest players.
“She will score goals that will never be forgotten,” said Chris Lemay, her former San Diego club coach who now leads Utah Valley University.
“She’s got everything,” Stanford coach Paul Ratcliffe added. “She’s got great technical ability. She’s got great athleticism. She’s got great speed, strength and power.”
But it is what Macario, 20, does not have yet that could determine whether she plays for the United States. Her quest to represent America in international competition depends on first securing U.S. citizenship and then getting approval from FIFA, the organization that oversees soccer.
If the stars align just right, Macario could be eligible to play for Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics next summer.
“It’s definitely the country I want to play for,” she said, adding, “if they would like to have me.”
Otherwise, she would play for Brazil or just sit out
the next three years until FIFA’s country-to- country rules allow her to play for the U.S. team even without citizenship.
For now, Macario worries about leading overall No. 1- seeded Stanford to the College Cup, Dec. 6- 8 at Avaya Stadium in San Jose. The Cardinal (21-1- 0) must get past undefeated Brigham Young in the quarterfinals at 3 p.m. today at Stanford’s Cagan Stadium to reach its ninth College Cup in 12 years. Stanford won soccer’s version of the Final Four in 2011 and again in 2017, Macario’s freshman season.
This year, Macario, the reigning college player of the year, has obliterated the school record book. With the potential for three more games, she already has broken season records for points (83), goals (30) and assists (23). Macario passed World Cup stars Kelley O’Hara and Christen Press, who played at Stanford a decade ago, in all three categories and is expected to graduate in 2021 as the all-time career leader as well.
As an attacking midfielder, she has scored seven goals in three NCAA tournament games this year, including a four-goal, fiveassist performance in the opener against Prairie View A&M.
“She can finish from pretty much anywhere,” said Jessie Fleming, a UCLA defensive midfielder who played every minute for Canada in the 2019 Women’s World Cup.
Lemay, a former Cal assistant when U.S. star Alex Morgan played in Berkeley, likes to say that Macario “is on the path to becoming the greatest women’s soccer player to play the game.”
The question is whether that will happen in a Brazilian or American uniform.
Macario got a green card at age 15 under the category “alien of extraordinary ability,” she said. She is eligible to apply for citizenship in December, but citizenship alone does not make Macario immediately eligible to play for the United States. FIFA tightened its transfer rules 15 years ago to stop federations from recruiting players with no ties to the country. Naturalized players have to show they came to a country to better their lives beyond playing soccer.
However, Macario could wait until she turns 23 and then play for the United States because, under FIFA rules, players who have lived continuously in the country for at least five years after the age of 18 are eligible, even if they are not citizens. The timeline would make Macario eligible to play in the 2023 World Cup. But waiting until age 23 would make it difficult to crack the U. S. national team roster, which is filled with many worldclass players.
So far, Macario has participated in U. S., under-23 national training camps without appearing in international matches.
Playing for the United States is one of her goals because “California is where she learned to play soccer and where she feels at home,” her father, Jose Macario, wrote in an email from Brazil. “Though she was born in Brazil, her values are American. I like to say, a parent is not who birthed you but rather who gave you love and support, and the U. S. gave her all the conditions to help her through her development as both a player and person.”
Brazilian soccer officials did not respond to questions sent by email earlier this month.
••• Playing soccer was Macario’s passion from the start.
“I had one doll growing up,” she said. “Someone gave it to me expecting me to like dolls. But I liked balls.”
Macario started playing soccer at age 4, joining her older brother, Estevao, on the field. They would play on the beach, in the streets or on courts for a five- onfive game called futsal.
Jose Macario said he quickly realized that his daughter had a gift. Unlike many Brazilian parents of girls, the Macarios encouraged their daughter’s interest in the “beautiful game,” the father said.
When she was 7, the Macarios moved from the Brazilian coast to the capital, Brasilia, where her mother, Ana Maria, is a surgeon. For the next five years, Catarina Macario played on boys’ teams. But girls are prohibited from participating with boys’ club teams after age 12.
“It is such a male sport in Brazil they really don’t care about girls,” she said. “The U.S., it’s just a hub for supporting women.”
At about the same time, Jose and Ana Maria considered options to improve their children’s lives, especially when it came to education. They decided Jose would get a student visa and take the children to the United States as his dependents. Ana Maria stayed behind to work.
The father searched the internet to find the top youth soccer clubs in the United States because his daughter wanted to continue playing.
After considering Dallas, they settled in San Diego. Jose Macario sent the San Diego Surf FC an email inquiring about the possibilities of his daughter playing there.
Lemay, her former coach in San Diego, said he used to receive inquiries from around the world like the one Macario sent. Most of the players were not as good as advertised, he said.
“I didn’t expect her to step into what was arguably the best U. S. 14 club team in the country and blow my mind away,” he said.
Club teammate Bianca Caetano-Ferrara remembered the moment she saw her friend on the field, the day the Macarios arrived in San Diego from the airport. The striker watched the newcomer in a shooting drill.
“Cat took a touch and had a ‘ banger’ shot,” CaetanoFerrara said of Macario taking a pass and kicking the ball into the back of the net.
“That was a good day.”
Caetano- Ferrara, who also plays for Stanford, and her Brazilian-born mother, Eliane, had a big role in helping the Macarios settle in San Diego. At the time, only Catarina’s teenage brother Estevao, now a film studies major at USC, spoke English. The Caetano-Ferraras acted as translators as Jose Macario searched for schools and a place to live.
Bianca Caetano-Ferrara, who has had three knee surgeries in the past two years, has played for Brazil’s youth national team. Down the road, the U.S.-born forward might be playing for Brazil against Brazilian-born Macario, representing America.
For now, they love playing together at Stanford. It was Caetano-Ferrara who got the assist when Macario broke the school record for goals scored in a single season.
Asked to describe one of her spellbinding goals, Macario said, “Half the times, whoa, what just happened?”
Caetano-Ferrara interrupted her.
“I feel like you just know,” she said of those magical shots.
Someday, the rest of the soccer world is likely to know, too.