On the far side of the field, Catalina Usme tore away, sprinting toward the fans. Her Colombia teammates followed in her wake, eating up the ground in the rush to close the distance, to catch her to celebrate the goal that would soon take the country past Jamaica and into the first Women’s World Cup quarterfinal in Colombia’s history.
Linda Caicedo was not among their number. When Usme had coolly converted Ana María Gúzman’s cross to give Colombia the lead, she had turned the other way, toward the coaching area and the substitutes’ bench. She had tensed her arms, hanging low by her sides, clenched her fists, and roared: an expression not of joy or delirium but sheer, unbridled relief, the sound of something being released.
Caicedo’s emergence at this World Cup has not exactly been a surprise. She might only be 18, but her talent has been so obvious, and so prodigious, for so long that she is anything but an overnight sensation. She has long been earmarked as the next big thing: for Colombia, for South America, and increasingly for women’s soccer as a whole.
Her ascent has had a breakneck quality: She played her first senior game for her first club side, América de Cali, at age 14. She made her debut for her country just a few months later. She won one Colombian…
