Carli Lloyd Doubles Down on Blunt Criticism of USWNT

The legendary midfielder handed down a thorough indictment of the team’s direction to ‘The Athletic.’

During the United States’s lackluster Women’s World Cup performance, legendary former USWNT midfielder Carli Lloyd emerged as one of the team’s fiercest critics.

First, Lloyd laid into the Americans after they appeared to celebrate a 0–0 draw with Portugal on Aug. 1, saying “the player of the match was [the] post” that deflected a potential Portuguese goal. After the U.S. was eliminated by Sweden in the round of 16, Lloyd told Fox viewers the nation was “failing at the U-17 level [and] failing at the U-20 level.”

Does Lloyd regret her comments, which drew significant commentary by themselves in the United States and beyond? The answer, which she made clear to Richard Deitsch of The Athletic Tuesday morning, is no.

“I think maybe I was the only one brave enough to say it how it is,” Lloyd said. “I’ve always been somebody that is blunt, that’s honest, that maybe comes across to the media as being selfish, arrogant, all these words that I’ve heard about me. And that’s been pretty wild to hear because it’s really not true. … I just saw this team go in a direction where the values that were built and instilled in this team is not what was displayed out at this World Cup.”

• Women’s World Cup schedule: Streaming, TV information.

Lloyd played in four World Cups for the United States, winning the tournament in 2015 and 2019. In the ’15 final against Japan—possibly the most memorable individual performance in U.S. soccer history—Lloyd collected a hat trick in the first 16 minutes of the game.

There was no such performance for the U.S. this time around, and the team was left to contend with its worst finish in tournament history.

“We have regressed so far down that there really is no gap. That’s what’s hard to swallow because the team has been built on legacies that have been passed down from generation to generation, and I simply didn’t like what I saw,” Lloyd said.