The story of Catalina Pérez, told by her mother

In W Radio Time Trial Luz Maria Jaramillo spoke, former presenter and former director of Testimony and who is today also the proud mother of the titular goalkeeper of the Colombia Women’s National TeamCatalina Perez.

Catalina arrived in South Florida at the age of 4 with her parents Luz Maria Jaramillo and Alejandro Perez. They, very few soccer fans, were surprised when the little girl began to ask them for guayos, shin guards and other implements to play soccer. “I offered her rackets to play tennis or told her that she was putting her in the cheerleaders, but she made a face at me there,” Jaramillo said.

Although initially he did not want to play in that position, the most unpleasant in football, the ball took Pérez so far that he received a sports scholarship at his school and later at the University of Miami, where he studied finance and did an MBA. In addition, the current goalkeeper left an excellent job in a bank in Boston, to follow her dream of going to Europe to be a professional soccer player. Pérez initially played for Fiorentina, then for Napoli and now he is at Betis in Seville, in Spain.

The goalkeeper of the national team is 27 years old and in one of Colombia’s friendlies with the United States, the best team in the world, covered two maximum penaltiesto the point that the American public in the stadium cheered her, as did the technical director of that team.

Luz Maria Jaramillo also spoke about the present that women’s soccer is experiencing in Colombia and the conversations she has had with her daughter about it: “They are worried and sad about the issue of the local league. In any case, we are optimistic because with the talent of these girls, stadiums are being filled, people are connecting with women’s football and they vibrate with their games. What is happening is off the charts and women’s football will be a business just like men’s sooner rather than later,” she concluded.