Carli Lloyd on Soccer’s Double Standard

DAVID GREENE, HOST: Alright, Meg, you wanna dive in?

MEG LINEHAN: Yeah, let’s do it.

DG: Okay, cool. This is Sports in America. I’m David Greene, and the question we are getting to today is, have we reached a massive moment for professional women’s soccer in the United States? The National Women’s Soccer League, the NWSL, is about to open their next season this weekend, and Meg Linehan, who’s the lead women’s sports writer at The Athletic, is with us. Meg, how big a moment is this for women’s pro soccer? This feels like a great season that’s about to get started.

ML: I think it’s always so fascinating, right, at the start of a season. Everybody’s hopes and dreams are all alive. We’ve got two expansion teams coming into the NWSL this year. No one’s lost a game yet, except I guess you could say Gotham, you know, going abroad.

DG: That’s always the greatest thing about sports when you start a season.

ML: Yeah. So I think there is this chance, again, to think about where the NWSL is in its own growth, in its own history now. The fact that we are into double digits of seasons in the NWSL is in and of itself a win for the league for women’s soccer in this country. And now what’s going to be so fascinating to me about 2026 is the NWSL is going to exist, coexist, compete, I don’t even know, with the 2026 Men’s World Cup, right? And so soccer will have this moment in this country, and a complicated one at that, right? And then you still got the NWSL playing through to some extent, this tournament, figuring out, you know, Boston Legacy brand new team can’t actually play in its temporary stadium, it’s gonna have to go to Providence, Rhode Island. There’s gonna be a lot of really interesting things happening this season, but right now, everything is all hope and fascination. So it’s a fun time.

DG: Which is awesome. Yeah, I want to ask you about the Boston legacy, because you said they don’t have their main stadium yet. They have a temporary stadium, which is Gillette Stadium, which is where the New England Patriots play in the NFL, but they can’t play there because of the World Cup. Do I have that right?

ML: Correct. Correct. Yeah. I mean, and this is not even…

DG: They’re into a third stadium?

ML: They’re into a third stadium in Providence, Rhode Island. And what is really interesting is even the teams that do have, you know, full control over their own stadiums and training facilities, you look at Kansas City Current and Kansas City Current have said, “Hey, listen, we’re a whole city, technically you don’t really need our facilities, but there are so many teams that have to find a place to, to live, right? “And so Kansas City Current has even given up. Its own facilities that it controls. So it’s gonna impact a lot of things off and on this summer.

DG: Are players, owners in the NWSL, are they angry that this is all coinciding with the World Cup? Are they excited about it? Are they sort of in a wait-and-see mode?

ML: I think there is a real opportunity, right? Because in theory, anytime you host a World Cup, men’s or women’s, there’s gonna be this focus on the sport, right? And I think this is such a different, you think back to 1994 for the men, 1999 for the women, right, and those were establishing sort of foundation-building tournaments, and now we’re in a completely different situation. You’ve got 2026 for the man. 2028 Olympics here as well, and soccer scattered throughout the country in a really strange way, despite the Olympics being in LA. And then the U.S. is in part hosting the 2031 Women’s World Cup. So this is the chance to really start thinking about all of these big tent pole events being in the country. How do you insert the NWSL into a conversation about the men’s World Cup? And that’s a big question that doesn’t always have a very easy answer.

DG: Well, we’re all about our own biases on this show. Like with my Terrible Towel, literally, I never wanna do a show without Pittsburgh somehow being there. So I wanna talk about your biases, Boston Legacy, bringing professional women’s soccer back to Boston for the first time in like a decade, right? And you have a personal connection to this. I mean, you interned, I think, for the Boston Breakers, which were the last NWSL team in Boston.

ML: Well, I interned for the WUSA edition because I’m old. So in the first league immediately following the 1999 World Cup, I interned that first year for the Boston Breakers.

DG: And what you’re saying is they weren’t in a league before NWSL, even.

ML: They were in a league, two leagues before the NWSL. So this is a, this is awhile ago, you know, early aughts, but the breakers have always been, I think the team that really, you know, was such a foundational part of my own journey into the sport and into working in the sport, whether that was interning for the first edition or being around the WPS-era edition of the team, and then starting my own into sports. photography and then journalism via the NWSL version of the Boston Breakers. Then that team shuddered and folded in a very strange and sort of painful way. But to have Boston Legacy come back in, it’s so interesting to me just because this is a market, you know, you think about sports in Boston, right? And they are obviously, you know, as someone who grew up outside of Boston, sports are everything. But women’s soccer has had such a hard time really cracking that attention lock that the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, Bruins have always had. And the Revs have had the same problem on the men’s side.

DG: But there is, you know, you bring up a good point. I mean, even if we can say that the NWSL is having a moment, it might still be playing the long game. I mean it might be, you were born into Celtics, Red Sox fandom. I mean, maybe there are kids who will be born into Boston Legacy fandom, and it’ll just take time for that to grow generationally, but there is something, I mean, I don’t know, like I watch. I’ve been to so many sporting events, and I love seeing kids sort of look aspirationally out on the field or the pitch or at an NBA game or on the rink. And you just see kids watching, and it feels to me like they’re watching, like maybe I could be that someday. But when I’ve gone to Angel City games matches, like it’s that and even more so. Like you’re seeing young girls sort of in BMO stadium and that is one of the beautiful things about the soccer fan base in Los Angeles, you know, Angel City and LAFC own, I mean, they, they use the same stadium BMO and you know different ownership, but there is something really that feels very meshed together in a very powerful way where it’s like, you know men’s women’s soccer. It’s, you know, two fan bases that share the same place and you know, support one another. There is something important and beautiful about that.

ML: Yeah, what is also, I think, so fascinating too, and what I do expect is gonna play out this summer with the men’s World Cup is that soccer fans in this country, for the most part, at least the ones that are very invested or very online, I think also have kind of a similar political bent. And so we have seen a lot of that, especially on the women’s side. I mean, even the fact that we say women’s soccer, that inherently makes it this kind of political thing, of you need the modifier in front to differentiate it. And I say men’s World Cup, but not most people do, right? So there is this, I think, chance to maybe, again, use this summer where there is a men’s World Cup, where I think a lot of political, we’ve already seen how political this World Cup has gotten. There is a real chance. I mean, maybe I think the league is really going to try to stay out of that, but I do expect viewers and fans and supporters to really lean in and think about the community that has been built within the world of, you know, I think every level of soccer in this country. But as someone who lives in one of these smaller markets with the USL2 team, where, you know, the stadium has 2,500 capacity and they could have sold 15,000 tickets for the USL2 final last year.

DG: That’s crazy.

ML: There is this sense of something special can be built where you’re looking at your neighbors and your community. And like, yes, soccer is one part of the conversation, but there is this chance to actually build something around the soccer as well. So I hope that’s a conversation that we have this summer.

DG: Speaking of something special being built, Boston Legacy, the new team in Boston, starts the season against Gotham from New York, New Jersey. I guess I, I mean, this is the question a lot of people are asking about what we’re seeing right now. Like is Gotham the first dynasty in the history of NWSL, or is that going too far?

ML: I don’t think it’s necessarily the first dynasty for a couple of reasons, because we’ve seen runs that have been dominant from teams previously in the NWSL. When you think of early NWSL, I mean, Portland has always kind of been like in and out of the picture, but FC Kansas City, Seattle Reign were two of the most dominant teams early on. And then North Carolina Courage had this like crazy three-to-four-season run. So, yes. Gotham has a real chance, especially if they make it to the championship again this year, which I think they are gonna be capable of. They’ve stayed pretty steady in that roster. They have a good head coach. They have the investment now. But I do think now, just there’s so many more trophies on the line in the world of women’s soccer. And so that has, I think, changed the conversation around Gotham. The fact that they were able to go and play in Europe against other top club teams, which did not go as planned, but still, I think sets the bar now for teams that have real ambition within this league. But Gotham is definitely, they would like to have that dynasty conversation, I’ll put it that way.

DG: I’m sure they would, although it might put pressure on them. So it’s interesting that always did…

ML: They don’t mind being the villains. I’ll put it that way. I think they’re kind of like they laugh about it, but I think they’re like, no, we could be the bad guys for a while. That would be fun.

DG:: Perfect club name, perfect club name too. Before I let you go, we’re about to listen to this conversation with Carli Lloyd that I had, obviously, one of the biggest stars ever in soccer in the United States. We’re actually gonna hear your voice in some of the show today, because you have followed her story for so long, but just wondering, how do you think of her and some of these veterans who accomplished so much over the years to build soccer in the U.S., as this season in WSL is getting started?

[MUSIC]

ML: It’s a really good question, because when you put Carli Lloyd in conversation with some of these younger players, right, like what’s fascinating is we’re almost now like a full generation removed from that group of players, which is so wild to me. Like, there’s actually kind of this middle generation of, you know, Lindsey Heaps, who’s actually coming back to play in the NWSL later this year for a new expansion team in Denver.

DG: Which was huge, right? She’s the captain of the women’s national team, and she’s now gonna be in this expansion club in Denver, which is awesome.

ML: Right. And coming back from France, you know, she was a Portland Thorn many, many years ago, MVP of the league. And so for her to come back, right, big story. But I think what is really interesting is that, you, know, as much as I think Carli Lloyd was never front and center in terms of being a vocal person about like, we’re building this for the next generation, like, I don’t think she would have shied away from it, but I don t think she ever was really out there. She wanted to play soccer. Like, that’s the Carli Lloyd vibe. But I do think just by virtue of being her and by having that high standard, we have seen NWSL clubs have to be better, right? And that’s been the history of the NWSL. She has, she went through some clubs that really have needed to be pushed in terms of the standards, in terms of investment, and so I always think that no matter what, having a player who is unafraid to say things that need to be said. Right, and do so publicly, in the long run, that’s only been beneficial for the NWSL as much as they hate it in the moment. It has built a better product. It has built a better experience for these players who are now coming in, who, honestly, I think if you tried to describe what, you know, 2014, 2015 NWSL was like, they would look at you like you’re bananas. And that’s a good thing. That’s a good, like, the standard has risen so high, you look at. You know, that game day experience for Angel City, you look at that game experience for Kansas City Current, even Gotham FC now being at Sports Illustrated Stadium, as opposed to this tiny little venue on Rutgers campus with 900 people in attendance, it’s night and day. So there is this real sense of, you know, the players who were there in the first days built a lot of stuff that they should not have been responsible for building. And even if they were not necessarily thinking, like, it’s my job to build this, or like, it’s not my job build this, but I’m gonna do it anyway. They were still such a key part of making the NWSL better. So that’s how I always think about that sort of generational pass into 2013 NWSL was the wild west. I cannot even express enough how just absurd it was in so many ways. You know, you look back on it now, you’re just like. I don’t know how this league survived, but it’s in such a different place. And it’s because of players like Carli, like Alex Morgan, you know, I can rattle down the list, but they all put so much effort for not a lot of pay. (Laughs) And here we are.

DG: Yeah, here we are. This league is not just surviving, but thriving. And coming up next, we’re gonna listen to our conversation with Carli Lloyd. But first, Meg Linehan is the women’s sports lead at The Athletic. Meg, it’s always great having you on our show. Thanks so much.

ML: Thank you.

[MUSIC]

DG: Carli Lloyd is one of the most decorated soccer players in our country’s history. She’s also one of the more misunderstood sports celebrities of our time.

In the time I’ve been able to spend with her, she’s taught me how keeping people guessing… can kind of be a strength.

But showing up like that, confident and unfazed — it doesn’t always reflect what’s going on inside.

Now there are different ways to get into the story of Carli Lloyd. Big moments, like her performance at the 2015 World Cup.

CARLI LLOYD: I knew that Japanese goalkeeper always played off her line, and I went for it.

ANNOUNCER: Long-range effort from Lloyd, oh my goodness! It’s a hat trick! With one of the most incredible goals you’re ever likely to see.

DG: There’s her unmatched dedication to the game.

CL: Obviously, you’re doing grueling running, so you have to, your mind has to go somewhere. So I actually visualized scoring five goals in a World Cup final.

DG: And there are the bold and memorable things people have said and written about Carli.

The Washington Post has a headline about you,”Beast, weirdo, choker, winner.” Is that just plain mean?

CL: People really misunderstood me in the beginning of my career. You know, all they saw was literally the tunnel vision, the crazy eyes.

DG: Carli is an enigma: a stubborn athlete with complicated relationships, a hard worker whose legendary career was fueled by some early losses, a woman who says exactly what she’s thinking.

CL: When people see a successful person, but also a confident person who’s not afraid to say what they think, a lot of people can’t handle that. And I think because I’m female, it has never kind of gone over well with people. They just label you as arrogant.

DG: This is a story about the people in sports who inspire us, and the uncomfortable question: do we ever REALLY know them? And in the end, does that matter?

[MUSIC]

DG: Carli grew up in the small town of Delran, New Jersey. She likes to say – half jokingly – that this is ALL you really need to know to understand her. We talked about this when I interviewed her on NPR back in 2016.

CARLI LLOYD NPR INTERVIEW: “For so long, I’ve been a little misunderstood as a person. I do have this strut about me — I don’t know if it’s the Jersey girl in me. I like to think of myself as an egg: hard on the outside but soft on the inside.”

DG: Even back then, she was dedicated to soccer.

CL – NPR: “I used to kick the ball up against the curb for hours upon hours. And I would go to the field, and I would just shoot and shoot and shoot. And I think, at those moments, as a youngster, 10, 12 years old, that’s when you know that someone is passionate about something. You don’t have to force them to go out and train.”

DG: Yet Carli’s success wasn’t a foregone conclusion. There was a time when her entire soccer career was in jeopardy.

I was lucky enough to interview you a few years ago when you released your memoir, “When Nobody Was Watching.” It’s an amazing book. So, you’re in addition to all the other things we’ve talked about, you’re a great author, and I remember you, and I spoke about your youth and sort of dreaming of playing soccer. And there was a time, and this was astounding to me, that you thought about quitting the sport altogether when you were trying to get on the under-21 team. And you told me that you were missing something in your life, like someone, like a person to guide you, to ask you challenging questions. What exactly were you missing? And how hard was that?

CL: Well, I think for so long I had never really been, you know, I guess all of my coaches, if I was giving 80% of my 100, it was still better than most people’s 100%.

DG: Sounds about right.

CL: So I would just play, but really, I needed somebody to kind of kick me in the butt a little bit and say, “Hey, you know, you’ve got to work hard every single day, not just pick and choose your moments.” And I really just, just needed someone to tell me, this is what you need to do in order to get to the next level. The next level, everybody’s talented. Everybody’s good. Everybody’s fit. And in order for you to stay there, you’ve got unique qualities about you that you could be a part of that team. But this has to be part of your life. You’ve got to train hard. You’ve got to get yourself fit. You’ve got to, you know, become mentally tough, tougher. So I really hadn’t failed per se up to that point. And then when I got cut, I didn’t really know how to deal with it. I didn’t know how to bounce back from that. You know, once I started to make some lifestyle changes and start working hard and making myself just give everything I have in each and every training session. Then I started to see things changing a bit.

DG: Maybe Carli needed that early lesson about bouncing back when she got to the World Cup final in 2011\. Carli and the U.S. Women’s National Team were facing Japan. They were tied, 2-2, after extra time, and the game would be decided in a penalty shootout.

Three Americans, including Carli, stepped up to take their PKs – penalty kicks. And…

BROADCASTER: It’s all going horribly wrong here for the USA in the shootout.

DG: They all missed, and the U.S. came in second in the 2011 World Cup.

Can you just set this up for us? I mean, the pain from losing to Japan in 2011, does that stick with you for four years? Like, just hoping for another chance?

CL: 100%. Especially when you miss a PK in the World Cup final like I did.

DG: You held that personally, I mean that loss.

CL: Oh, absolutely. We felt like we were destined to win in 2011,ust the way that everything kind of unfolded. Our win against Brazil, that went into PKS, we all made, you know, every one of our PKS then and then to have faced Japan in the final and to have another penalty shot, a PK shootout. Your mind starts to play, you know, tricks with you. Do you keep your same spot? Does the keeper know where you went last time? And you know when myself, Shannon Box, and Tobin Heath, we stepped up, and we second-guessed, we questioned. And, yeah, it was devastating. I mean, that’s that’s something that you don’t get over. We had flew back to the U.S., and we were treated as if we basically won the World Cup, and we were like, this is, you know, we got second place. But we started a trend that kind of led us into 2015.

DG: Yeah, Carli wasn’t gonna let her legacy be that loss. She used the devastation from it to propel her into the next World Cup four years later. It would be the US against Japan again.

So 2015, you go through six games, you give up one goal. Were you feeling like, this is it, we’re going to face Japan? This is destiny. We’re going to beat them in that championship.

CL: Not in the beginning, no. I think we started off very defensive-minded. Jill Ellis wanted us to essentially in the midfield, almost play with two sixes. So two defensive midfielders with Lauren Cheney and I. That’s obviously not in my nature. My nature is attacking-minded. So we were not coming out on the front foot. We were, you know, kind of taking the back foot and just allowing teams to start to come to us. And so getting through that group, I mean, we got through the group, and the talk of the town was, you know, this team’s not going to win a World Cup. Everybody thought we looked terrible. Everybody thought that we were going to potentially go out in the first round of the knockout stages.

DG: So was that still nagging at you as you face Japan in the final, or do you kind of gotten through dealing with that narrative and those doubts?

CL: Well, it was a build, right? So we got out of the group. We then face Colombia in the knockout stage. That’s where we sort of started to come into our own. And it wasn’t until we had some yellow card suspensions, where Megan Rapinoe and Lauren Cheney actually had to sit out a game against China in the quarterfinals. And so that’s when Jill decided to listen to what pretty much the entire media was saying. Unleash Carli. And she did.

[MUSIC]

DG: Well, Unleash Carli seems appropriate to talk about that World Cup final.

Unleashed is really an understatement. Carli was about to do something no woman had ever done in a World Cup final. Those insane opening 16 minutes of the match would be career defining for her.

BROADCASTER: Rapinoe’s driven the ball in towards Lloyd. What a start for the United States! Carli Lloyd, the captain!

DG: It’s just three minutes into the match, and Carli gets her first chance to score with a corner kick.

CL: The way that I was able to get it in the back of the net was just with the outside of my left foot.

DG: Then, only two minutes later.

BROADCAST: And it’s turned in for a second, Carli Lloyd again!

CL: And the second one was a free kick.

DG: At this point, Carli has scored twice in the first five minutes of the game and she’s showing no signs of stopping. Even if she’s at midfield.

CL: I knew that that Japanese goalkeeper always played off her line, and I went for it.

BROADCAST: Long-range effort from Lloyd, oh my goodness! It’s a hat trick! With one of the most incredible goals you’re ever likely to see. You couldn’t have written that start.

DG: Your team comes out, I mean, four goals in 16 minutes, three of them scored by you. And the third one. Did you plan for that to happen? I mean, did you see their goalie in a certain place and be like, I’m literally going to kick this from near midfield and and I’m going to score here.

CL: So I’ll go back probably several months to when I was running on the field by myself, and I had my music on.

[MUSIC]

CL: And I just kind of got lost in my thoughts and thought a lot. Obviously you’re you’re doing grueling running, so you have to; your mind has to go somewhere. So I actually visualized scoring five goals in a World Cup final.

DG: Five.

CL: Five. And I did have the opportunity to score two more in that game, and I did not visualize scoring a goal from midfield. But yeah, I visualized it like I actually thought about scoring five goals in a World Cup final. One day, when I was just running on the field with no one around me doing sprints, and several months later, you know, I find myself in this situation.

DG: Did you think back to the memory of that dream, that fantasy, when you were on the field here?

CL: This was just literally the flow state. And that’s why, you know, you think about the great moments, you think about the Michael Jordan flu game. And I think when you are prepared, when you’re having fun, when you’re just in the moment, you know, things happen that you can’t really explain. And it just happened to pay off in a World Cup final. What made me and allowed me to thrive under the pressure is knowing that I was always prepared. Like I knew that no one else was training as hard as I was, was focusing as much as I was, was living and breathing the game of soccer as much as I was. I mean, I would go to the training field, and it would never end there. I would come home. I was constantly thinking about the game, thinking about things that I needed to do.

DG: What is it like to represent your country on a stage like that, and to have that much personal success with a hat trick?

CL: I mean, it’s indescribable. It’s it was one of the greatest moments of my career, hands down. And, I talk about this build from 2011\. Right. And it just all came together at the right moment and all of our lives changed. And then the pressure became even more immense.

DG: How did your life change?

CL: You know, I think for me, being on the national team in 2005, I was part of the Olympics, World Cups, you know, doing well within the team, but just not, you know, not really out there. Didn’t have a ton of endorsements, didn’t have a ton of opportunities. And it was almost like I needed to score three goals in a World Cup final at that moment for people to be like, Oh, wow, she does play on the team. No one can take the history away from you, right? So we’re forever etched in history. And it was really it was just such a spectacular moment, especially being in Vancouver and in Canada the whole time. I mean, we felt like we were playing a World Cup in the United States of America. And you felt that you felt the crowd, you looked up, you saw red, white and blue everywhere. And so it was almost better. we didn’t win in 2011\. Because I think for this moment in time, social media, like I said, Fox Sports, everything had just kind of came at the right moment.

DG: I want to ask you, there was a headline, and I almost feel weird even reading this to you because it’s just it’s mean. But the next day, after you win a World Cup title and you score three goals, The Washington Post has a headline about you,” Beast, weirdo, choker, winner,” and all about what they described as contradictions in Carli Lloyd. When you listen to that, is that just plain mean?

CL: I mean, believe me, I took notes. I took notes till the end of my career. I’m still taking notes.

DG: This reporter should watch out, basically.

CL: Haven’t forgotten any of those bits. In fact, it’s in my Players’ Tribune when I retired, you know, just a lot of things that I just took note of. And, you know, I was fueled and always fueled by my inner motivation. But the haters and the doubters pushed me to greater lengths. So I’m appreciative of that because I don’t know that maybe there wouldn’t be moments like this, you know, maybe I wouldn’t keep rising. And I think, you know, when people see a successful person, but also a confident person who’s not afraid to say what they think, who isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers, or, you know, just speak the truth, a lot of people can’t handle that. And I think because I’m female, it has never kind of gone over well with people. They just label you as arrogant. But if a male Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan says they’re one of the best players and, you know, no one trains harder than them or, you know, no one’s more mentally tough than them, it’s OK. But why wasn’t it okay if I was confident in myself? I backed it up, and I prepared to be able to speak that; then there shouldn’t be anything wrong. So I think that people just look at things. They’ve got no clue of the situation. I failed a whole lot in my career, and because of those failures, I’ve been able to have those moments.

[MUSIC]

DG: You say it’s different being a woman. Is anything getting better? Have you seen progress in your career in people in the media and fans?

CL: I mean, I think it’s different circumstances. I think that people just really misunderstood me in the beginning of my career. You know, all they saw was literally the tunnel vision, the crazy eyes. That was all I was about, you know? And now in this life after soccer, people are seeing a different light of me. You know, I’m smiling. I’m, you know, sharing a little bit more about my personal life. But that’s always been there, just not for the whole world to see. And I think in the end of my career, I think people now have understood why I was the way that I was. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t try to be the best of the best, and, you know, not have a crazy tunnel vision of focus. You just can’t do it. And that’s why there’s very few of them, you know, there’s there’s not a thousand Tom Bradys or Michael Jordan’s or Kobe Bryant’s, there are few and far between. And the singular focus that is needed is immense. It’s a lot and it’s not for everybody. So in that department, I think you know, I don’t care either way. Like I’m just going to keep being me. But I think on the other equality issues, yes, it’s starting to get better. But I you know, I still think that there’s still a ton to go.

DG: Coming up next, we’re gonna dive right back into our conversation with Carli Lloyd.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

DG: Welcome back and let’s get right back into our conversation with Carli lloyd

Before that wild 2015 World Cup when Carli Lloyd scored 3 goals in what certainly felt like 45 seconds, her legacy was not certain. She was a super dedicated, super talented soccer player, sure. But if you read the headlines about her, it seemed like she had all this baggage — from family issues to big public failures on the field.

Still, there was one person in sports media who believed in her, even then.

ML: When we were deciding who was going to write what for Vice about the final, I immediately was like, I would like to write about Carli.

DG: That’s Meg Linehan, the women’s sports reporter we talked to earlier from The Athletic. But back in 2015, Meg was just beginning her career — trying to claw her way into journalism by writing about women’s soccer.

Even though Carli Lloyd’s reputation was pretty mixed, Meg saw something in her. She had this feeling Carli was – yeah – about to be unleashed and make history.

ML: And then I will say thank you, Carli Lloyd, because then she made me look like a genius for me being like, I think she’s a key player for this team right now.

DG: Meg did what great journalists do: She tried to capture all the nuance of a person as best she can. Even if it led to the kind of headline we know Carli doesn’t love. But over time, Meg learned the importance of gaining trust, especially when covering sports.

That story that you wrote in 2015 that was in Vice, right?

ML: Yes.

DG: I have the headline up. “Stone cold weirdo Carli Lloyd leads U.S. into World Cup final.”

ML: Somehow, she’s never yelled at me for that headline. I mean, I stand by it because I meant it as the highest form of compliment, because elite athletes are just, they’re built differently, right? I think to any normal human being, especially at that point in her life, what she was doing was so completely alien to me as a normal human being who was like, I don’t want to go for a run today. So I just won’t.

DG: (Laughs) That is not how she is built. She would go for that run no matter what, whether she was like suffering from the flu or whatever. But the weirdo thing, I mean, that word was not an invention of yours, right? I mean, she was sort of seen as the weirdo on that women’s team at that time.

ML: Yeah, I mean, I think that is kind of a fair assessment of just she felt very apart from the team in a lot of ways. You know, you go back to kind of the fundamental sporting trauma of Carli Lloyd’s soccer career, which is getting cut from a youth national team and kind of being told like, you’re not serious enough about this. And then you see the overcorrection, and you see the path that she took to make sure that never happened again. And so that’s where I think you land at kind of this, you know, she’s in the spotlight. And she never, even at that point, I think, really was fully comfortable in that spotlight, and so then I think you get a headline like that.

DG: I want to read a bit of what you wrote in that story that this was right before the World Cup final. just, mean, to set the stage, like Carli had missed a penalty kick four years before, which was part of the reason that the U S team lost to Japan. Four years later, they have the rematch that, that was sort of destiny against Japan. You write the story in Vice just before that massive match.

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DG: And you wrote of Carli, “She is earnest in a way that should be annoying. She does not understand the purpose of artifice. Lloyd is an athlete that screams no [EXPLETIVE]. There is hard work, end of list. has an uncanny ability to earn black eyes during games. There is a fan-designed t-shirt with Lloyd’s face, black eye included, that simply says no chill. She’s either the most frustrating or most fun player to watch on the pitch.” I mean, that is like beautiful writing, by the way, and also so many contradictions that you’re trying to make sense of.

ML: Thank you. Yes. And I think that’s Carli. I don’t know. do. I do really have a fond, and like, I don’t want it. I don’t want to make it seem like she can be frustrating. Right. And I think that has also come across in her post-playing career, too. I think people get deeply frustrated watching her on TV. I think, but everything she says is just exactly what she’s thinking. And her approach to the game has honestly never really changed. And I don’t know, just having watched her for a very, very long time across both the NWSL, the national team, whatever it is, I think there is very much a like, what you see is what you get with Carli Lloyd.

DG: I go back and I read your story now and I know what happened, like right afterwards in that World Cup final, and what Carli did, she scored three goals early on and basically set the tone for the match, and it was basically over. Were you sensing that? In your writing, it almost makes it sound like you’re predicting the future. Like, the team is gonna rely on her and she’s gonna carry them to this huge championship.

ML: I mean, I do think you look at Carli Lloyd in big games and tournaments. She had this track record with the Olympics, too, right? Like she has come through and she’s also failed in big moments with this team. think that is the nature of every player is you’re going to have the best successes you could ever dream of. Though I don’t think anybody, including me, could have ever dreamed up what she did in that 2015 World Cup final. But just knowing, I think where the, where that team was and where she was in 2015, she did have an air of, just kind of this inevitableness about her of knowing that I think she had been through the pain of again, that penalty kick miss in 2011 of some Olympic failure as well, you know, missing some shots. And again, all of that stuff also just motivates her. Like, she is this kind of perfect circle of tucking comments away and then a little gas combustion engine internally that just like gives her that fire. And so, like, I don’t think I could have predicted what that game was. Did I think that she was, at that time, one of the most important players on that team? 100%. And like, again, thank you for making me look extremely smart at that time.

DG: What do you think her legacy is and will be?

ML: I mean, one of the greatest.

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ML: When you look at her national team career, I mean, there’s no question she was a first ballot Hall of Famer. I voted for her for the National Soccer Hall of Fame. I mean, there’s just no question about, again, just her drive and her ability to perform on the field, the amount of medals and awards and all of that. she’s really among the top tier of U.S. soccer players. Now I think the question for her in terms of legacy is a, you know, does she want to shape that further beyond just being defined as one of the greatest on the field? Does she want to shape it as, you know, now she’s in a position of real power because she is one of the first voices that people who are new to the sport encounter on TV when watching a World Cup or another major event, because she’s doing so much broadcasting. So I think there is a real chance for her to understand that role in the ecosystem and understand that she has, again, real power to drive the narrative around women’s sports. There’s a huge potential for kind of a second act of this potential legacy. But I mean, she’s got to be pretty satisfied, too, with the one that she left on the field.

DG: Pretty satisfied, sure, but Carli Lloyd is honest about the ups and downs in her career. One of the big ones was the 2012 Olympics in London. Carli won with Team USA — but she wasn’t speaking to her family at that point, so she couldn’t share it with them.

CL: I think we all have journeys within our life that shape us into who we are, and I’m grateful for that. But, you know, I think, yeah, it’s incredibly important to surround yourself with a good support system. I’ve had my husband along for this ride my entire pretty much my entire career, as we’ve been dating since high school. And he’s seen me at my high, see me at my low. And if it weren’t for his support all these these years, you know, it would be truly very, very difficult. But it’s a it’s a lonely life. You know, it’s football’s an amazing game, and it gives you amazing moments, but it’s also lonely. It’s also hard every day to live up to the pressure to deal with the pressure, to reinvent yourself every single day. You’ve got critics, you’ve got doubters, you know, you’ve got all sorts of things that are kind of coming at you, and it can be very challenging. So it’s, you often see, you know, a lot of people kind of crumble through tough and challenging situations. So it’s so important to make sure that you’ve got good people around you.

DG: A part of your journey, your life journey that you wrote about, was losing touch with your parents for a long number of years. How did that happen and what did the sport have to do with it?

CL: Everybody’s sacrifices are different. And mine happened to be, you know, 12 years of not speaking to my family. Missing birthdays, missing holidays, missing weddings. You know, I wasn’t at my siblings’ weddings. They weren’t at our at, you know, at our wedding. You know, 2020 is obviously a year that none of us will ever forget. I happened to be home for 10 months straight. I also happened to have my first-ever surgery in my career. So whatever kind of came throughout all that, that moment in time…

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CL: Life changed for the better for me, and my family came back into my life, and they were able to be a part of my ending. The last year of my career, which…

DG: These last Olympics, right?

CL: Last Olympics, you know, farewell games, 300th cap. My last and final game in Minnesota. And it was just, you know, it was almost like picture perfect. It was almost like it was all meant to, to kind of go down like this. And, yeah, it’s been amazing so far. I’ve got, you know, three little nieces. We just haven’t missed a beat. And life has been really good.

DG: Given everything we’ve talked about, the sacrifice, the needing, the right people to surround you, what lessons would you give a kid who looks up to you? And is like when I dream of my future, I want to be Carli Lloyd.

CL: I think that they’re not going to be Carli Lloyd, right? We’re all different, you know? And I think that you can be inspired by someone, but you shouldn’t try to be somebody else because everybody’s their own unique person. And so, you know, what I would say is don’t be fearful of anything. You know, I think what kind of helped me through this journey is just not caring if I’m ever going to make a mistake or fail. Of course, at training sessions and stuff, you harp on, you know, giving the ball away or whatnot. But just having no fear to try different things, to put yourself out there to make yourself uncomfortable. You know, all of those things helps to shape you into who you are, and life has taught me that you’ve got to work extremely hard at whatever you want in life. And the third thing I would say is competing against yourself. That has not failed me. I think so often we look to the person next to us or in front of us, and we wish, you know, we had something that they had or we compare ourselves to them. I did my absolute best to never compare myself to anybody. I just tried to be the best version of myself each and every day and embrace that.

DG: Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for getting off a plane from Qatar and coming in and spending time with us, and I hope you continue to soak it all in. Carli Lloyd, thank you so much.

CL: Yeah, thanks everybody! Appreciate it.

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DG: Next time, on Sports in America, our live conversation with Emmy award winning commentator Bomani Jones. We’ll get into Kash Patel’s locker room antics after the big gold medal hockey game in Milan. We’ll also talk about why Bomani calls them the “whiter Olympics.” And the intersection of sports and politics as the United States gets ready to host the 2026 World Cup.

BOMANI JONES: Having the World Cup is not going to change anybody’s mind I don’t think about what we think the state of the United States is, in fact, it’s going to provide people an opportunity to come be mad about it and be hurt.

DG: We’re also going to learn more about Jones’ fascinating background and how he draws inspiration from his activist parents.

BJ: My mother is very composed and delivered, but my father was a much more of a rabble rouser.

DG: That’s all, next time, on Sports in America.

And we also want to hear from you. How about you drop us a line? You can write us at sportsinamerica@whyy.org. That’s sportsinamerica@whyy.org. Thanks everybody, we’ll see you next time for more Sports in America.

This is Sports in America. I’m your host, David Greene.

Our executive producers are Joan Isabella and Tom Grahsler.

Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa. Our engineer is Mike Villers.

Our theme song was composed by Michael Olcott, and our tile artwork was created by Bea Walling.

Sports in America is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia, and is distributed by PRX. Some of our interviews were originally created by Religion of Sports, produced by Adam Schlossman. Find Sports in America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeart Radio app — or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Host: David Greene
Executive Producers: Joan Isabella, Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Talent Booker: Britt Kahn
Engineer: Mike Villers, Adam Staniczeski
Tile Art: Bea Walling
Sports in America is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.

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