Kerolin was back with the Seleção Brasileira in September 2021, called up for two friendlies against Argentina after serving a two-year suspension that had pushed her out of top-level football and out of the 2019 World Cup picture. For a player whose career had already been tested by a serious illness as a child, the recall marked a return that was as much about resilience as form.
That return came after a suspension tied to a positive test from the previous year during the Libertadores, when she was already on the preliminary call-up list for the World Cup. The sanction lasted two years and, by the time it ended, Brazil moved quickly to bring her back into the national-team setup. The timing mattered because it was her first commitment after the ban, and it reconnected her to a side that had first noticed her in 2018 for a friendly against England.
Kerolin’s route to that moment had started long before the headlines. At 12 years old, she spent three months under medical observation for osteomyelitis and cellulitis in her leg, a condition that nearly led to amputation. Doctors advised her to stop playing contact sports. She did not. By 16, she was in the youth categories of Valinhos Futebol Clube, later taken over by Ponte Preta, and her rise was quick enough to turn into production: 10 goals in 21 games in an early spell with Ponte Preta, then 14 goals in 35 games after returning.
She added a decisive chapter with Corinthians/Audax, where she helped win the club’s first Libertadores title by converting one of the penalties in the final shootout. In 2017, she was named the revelation of the championship after another productive run. But the positive test changed the shape of her career. She lost the chance to go to the 2019 World Cup and did not play an official match for Palmeiras, even after being announced as a signing there.
The friction in her story is that the comeback never cleanly resolves into the present tense. She moved to Europe for the first time in 2021 and joined Madrid CFF in Spain, yet she is now described as being at Barcelona, with no clear explanation of when that switch happened. That missing step matters because her career is being framed as a ten-year climb from injury and suspension to Europe, and the next chapter is still only partly told.
For now, the clearest conclusion is that Kerolin did not disappear after the ban; she rebuilt her path back into the Seleção and into Europe. What remains unanswered is the simplest piece of the late-career map: when, exactly, she left Madrid CFF for Barcelona.
