CATA CARABIAS CRETTIER
Team Director & Performance Nutritionist | Girona FC C Team
For soccer players who want to become professionals, nutrition is not an extra—it is an essential part of training, recovery, health and long-term development.
Catalina “Cata” Carabias Crettier serves as Team Director and Performance Nutritionist for the International Soccer Academy C Team in partnership with Girona FC. She brings more than seven years of experience supporting professionals in elite football clubs across Europe, including FC Barcelona, Athletic Club, Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, Watford FC and the Swiss Women’s National Team.
Cata combines advanced expertise in sports nutrition with extensive experience working alongside coaches, medical professionals, performance staff and chefs. Her multidisciplinary approach helps players understand how their daily choices influence their ability to train consistently, recover effectively and perform at their highest level.
In her dual role with International Soccer Academy, Cata provides professional performance-nutrition support while also helping oversee the players’ daily experience as they develop in Spain.
Experience Across Elite European Football
Cata has worked within some of Europe’s most respected professional football organizations, supporting men’s and women’s first teams as well as youth academy players.
Cata also serves as a Performance Nutritionist for the Swiss Women’s National Team, providing individualized support for performance, recovery, hormonal health, hydration and body composition. She coordinates team meals during camps and works closely with players to establish personalized objectives.
Before joining International Soccer Academy, she led the comprehensive nutrition service for Watford FC’s Men’s First Team. In this role, she designed individualized plans to support player performance, recovery and overall health. Her responsibilities included nutritional strategies for training and matches, international travel planning, hydration monitoring, body-composition assessment, blood-test analysis, supplementation management and anti-doping compliance.
Her previous experience includes directing the first-team nutrition program at Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, where she developed weekly menus, recovery strategies and match-day protocols within one of the leading women’s football environments in Europe.
At Athletic Club, Cata supported the men’s and women’s first teams as well as academy players. Her work included nutrition education for players and families, supplementation protocols, residential catering, physiological monitoring and individualized performance strategies.
Performance Nutrition for Developing Players
Cata helps players understand how nutrition supports every part of that transition.
Her work focuses on:
– Individualized nutrition strategies
– Nutritional periodization for training and match days
– Hydration and sweat-rate monitoring
– Recovery optimization
– Body-composition assessment
– Injury and rehabilitation support
– Supplementation management
– Nutrition education and behavioral change
– Strategies for international travel and changing schedules
– Ramadan nutrition and hydration protocols
Rather than viewing nutrition as a short-term meal plan, Cata helps players build sustainable habits they can carry throughout their soccer careers. For International Soccer Academy players, this means nutritional support is connected directly to what happens on the training field and throughout their daily lives in Spain.
Every player has different physical needs, training demands, dietary preferences and performance goals. Cata uses an individualized and evidence-based approach to help each athlete identify the strategies that work best for their body and competitive schedule.
Her experience includes physiological monitoring through hydration testing, sweat-rate analysis, wellness reporting and body-composition assessment using DXA and anthropometric methods. As an ISAK Level 3 practitioner, she brings advanced expertise in body-composition analysis and athlete monitoring.
Supporting Players On and Off the Field
As Team Director, Cata’s responsibilities extend beyond performance nutrition. She helps provide structure, guidance and day-to-day support for players adjusting to life in a new country and a professional European football environment.
Living abroad can be an important period of growth for a young athlete. Players must learn greater independence, personal responsibility, communication and accountability while adapting to a different culture.
Cata’s international background and ability to communicate across cultures help her support players through this transition. A native Spanish speaker who is also fluent in English, she brings additional proficiency in French and foundational knowledge of Italian, Catalan/Spanish and German.
Her combination of high-performance expertise, leadership and personal support makes her an important resource for players navigating the challenges and opportunities of an international gap-year experience.
Cata holds a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics from Universidad del Desarrollo and a Master of Science in Sports Nutrition and Exercise from the University of Barcelona.