Carli Lloyd Is Sparring With Herself

Carli Lloyd’s impassioned retirement campaign continued its disjointed trajectory on Wednesday night. Technical glitches on CBS Sports’ Golazo channel forced Lloyd’s “Kickin’ It” interview off the air, with the company instead pointing viewers to the YouTube stream.

In the episode, Lloyd, a two-time World Cup champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist, was asked to elaborate on the no-holds-barred critiques of US Soccer and its players that she made as an analyst for FOX. 

But each time, Lloyd moved the goalposts when she could have buried a shot, refusing to name the enemies she believes to have been up against throughout her career, or to offer sound solutions to the problems she listed. It amounted to the rhetorical equivalent of on-air shadow boxing as veteran broadcaster Kate Abdo, along with former US men’s national team players Clint Dempsey, Maurice Edu, and Charlie Davies, worked to understand her. 

Tension is the late, uninvited guest that wedges its way into the party through a vague connection, chafes the social flow with off-beat provocations, and does not hesitate to scarf down the last of the food. It is inherently uncomfortable, but we can’t deny that tension gives us something to talk about — and even more importantly, it creates the contrast against which we can better define ourselves. And for a retired soccer player who claims to have succeeded despite unrelenting efforts to keep her down, the prospect of existing in the absence of tension appears too great a burden to bear. The only rational option, as demonstrated Wednesday evening, was to conjure it. 

Lloyd, for example, never explicitly called out the people she accused of stymieing her career by not signing her to certain agencies that would have, according to her, led to lucrative sponsorship deals. She referred to the entire US Soccer Federation as a nebulous, collective “they” throughout the interview.

“They” wanted the face of the US women’s national team to be “a puppet, someone who just goes about their business,” she said, and who could be groomed for stardom “before they were even born.” For that, she named two of the most promising young stars in US Soccer: Christian Pulisic and Mallory Swanson. (While Swanson may have been hyped by the federation when she made her 2016 Olympic debut at age 17, she was left off the U.S. roster for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics before returning to top form last year.)  

“What do I have to do to show what kind of player I am?” Lloyd said on the show, recounting her conundrum as a professional athlete determined to make a name for herself. She was clear, almost proud, about the type of teammate she was: “I wasn’t there to be liked. I was there to be respected,” she said, admitting that there were “some” players she confided in — but those relationships apparently weren’t sturdy enough for her to name them. 

“I didn’t let my guard down much,” she said. “I couldn’t trust anybody.” 

She boldly likened herself to two-time World Cup champion and Olympic gold medalist Michelle Akers, who, Lloyd argued, had also not been given the spotlight she deserved after helping seal so many victories for the US during the 1980s and 90s. But, asked whether she’d ever had a conversation with Akers about that issue, Lloyd said no. 

“But I think she gets it,” she said. “She’s seen it. How could you not?” 

For all the time she spent within the environment of US Soccer, Lloyd appeared at a loss for how to repair it. She described a national team comprised of a “dysfunctional group of players,” and in the same breath said the team was also “the most unbelievable environment to ever be in, because you…because you win.” 

Later, when the co-hosts invited her to offer theories on the roots of that so-called dysfunction, though, she dragged the conversation from the women’s team to the youth level, where she criticized an overemphasis on winning — the very thing she’d just praised about the senior team — at the risk of technical and tactical development. 

Abdo and Edu in particular attempted to push back. Edu specifically asked Lloyd to what extent she believed veteran players were responsible for instilling within their younger teammates the “dog mentality” she believes they currently lack, but again, Lloyd waxed nostalgic on the times she’d been scolded by legendary players like Mia Hamm and Briana Scurry when she was a newcomer on the national team, but failed to reference instances in which she herself administered that kind of feedback as a veteran player. Instead, she veered away and directed blame toward the coaches — and, essentially, away from herself.

The unfortunate takeaway that could easily get lost in the haze of Lloyd’s arguments is that some of the topics she so quickly dismissed actually deserve nuanced consideration. Intergenerational dynamics within a team do need to be sorted out, especially as the culture of soccer in the US appears primed to shift away from the bloodthirsty, win-at-all-costs mentality toward a more holistic approach that grants players the space for self-expression on and off the field. 

Questions of culture, and reflections on what it takes to win, have perhaps never overlapped as much as they do right now. 

Last October, US Soccer released the findings of an investigation by former US Attorney General Sally Yates into systemic abuse and sexual misconduct in women’s professional soccer. The investigation, which focused on the NWSL but also examined the role of US Soccer, found that a culture of fear — which has roots at the youth levels — contributed to widespread abuse in soccer. 

And as US Soccer approaches its self-imposed due date to name the next head coach of the women’s team, there will need to be a conversation about the ways in which certain objectives are prioritized, as well as the vision for how those objectives will trickle down to the youth levels. It’s just that Lloyd, for all the opportunities she seizes to speak, has yet to demonstrate any actual desire to be part of these solutions, only to name the problems — and even then, only the problems that provide her with an opponent against which she can continue to define herself.