The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Demoted star vows to shine
Carli Lloyd keeps positive view, looks to the moment.
She has gone from starting-lineup centerpiece to second-half substitute. She still wears No. 10 but has been asked to reinvent herself as a No. 9.
At 36, Carli Lloyd has kept a positive outlook, a level of professionalism, and, perhaps most important, a presence on the score sheet as her role with the U.S. women’s national team has gradually diminished in the past two years. But as she sat pondering her situation last Friday in the lobby of her team’s hotel in Lisbon — one day after appearing as a reserve in the United States’ 1-0 victory over Portugal, and only seven months before the start of another Women’s World Cup — Lloyd said she needed to make one thing clear.
“I think there would be something wrong if I were satisfied and saying, ‘I’m OK with coming off the bench,’” she said. “I’m going to be flatout honest: I’m not OK with coming out. I don’t think anybody should be OK with coming off the bench. I’m going to fight and push my teammates and try to help in any way possible.”
She paused, then added: “There’s a lot that can change in seven months.”
In seven months, Lloyd should be headed to France to help the United States try to defend its Women’s World Cup title. All signs, so far, indicate Lloyd, the tournament’s best player in 2015, will make the trip as a supporting player.
She has appeared 19 times for the national team this year, but has started only five of those games, most recently in Tuesday’s 1-0 victory at Scotland. Increasingly, she has been used as a target striker, a No. 9 in soccer parlance, rather than in her preferred central midfield position as an instigator, a creator, a No. 10. Her tally of seven goals for the United States is tied for second-most on the team in 2018, but the squad is stacked up front. That has left Lloyd, a two-time world player of the year, looking up on the depth chart.
That is not a position she enjoys, or accepts, but for the moment it is the only one coach Jill Ellis is offering. To those who support Ellis’ effort to invigorate the U.S. team in the run-up to France, it is also a decision that has some merit.
Even Lloyd acknowledged she was surprised to have won her second world player of the year trophy in 2016, only months after the U.S. team’s crushing elimination in the Olympic quarterfinals in Brazil. When she was named a finalist again a year later, after a pedestrian year in which her diminishing role was apparent to regular followers of the women’s game, only criticism of FIFA’s voting system obscured the increasingly caustic critiques of Lloyd’s performances.
Another year later, and with Lindsey Horan, Julie Ertz and Rose Lavelle — each at least a decade younger than Lloyd — having locked down roles in Ellis’ midfield, Lloyd has been left to try to capitalize on spare minutes as a goal-poaching substitute.
Still, Lloyd’s status has not been a story about a disgruntled old hand resisting change, bristling against reality. Her teammates last week praised her work ethic, and Lloyd herself said that the “time when every athlete has to hang up the boots” was approaching.
But hers isn’t a story about a veteran player happily easing into a diminished role either. She wants more minutes. She wants to win back a starting job. She wants to write her own ending.
“I think I’m as fit as I’ve ever been,” she said, “and to be honest, I feel as if I’m sort of in my prime.”
Lloyd was awarded the Golden Ball at the 2015 World Cup after scoring six goals, including a hat trick in the final. That year and the next, FIFA named her the world’s top player. She was among the biggest names in women’s soccer.
Yet that whole time, Lloyd said, she was already making subtle preparations for the years to come. She arranged a transfer to Manchester City in England, to test herself against top European competition, and then requested a trade to New Jersey’s Sky Blue FC in the National Women’s Soccer League, which allowed her to be closer to home, to her husband and to her trainer, James Galanis.
And she went to work trying to remake herself into the kind of player Ellis could not justify leaving on the bench. Lloyd pored over video of her on-field movements with Galanis, her personal coach for almost two decades, who kept reiterating that the fastest player on the field was not the one who runs the fastest but thinks the fastest. They reduced their skill drills and focused solely on finishing.
In an interview, Galanis mused that any perceived drop-off in her performance could be attributable to this tinkering, and he was optimistic Lloyd could again crack Ellis’ starting 11. “We hope that as we get closer she’s given chances to show that she hasn’t slowed down,” he said.
“I took apart my game and changed a lot of things,” Lloyd said. “I used to be a player who got the ball and it was Point A to B, get to the goal. Now it’s about being more sophisticated, putting the brakes on, having my game be unpredictable.”
As a midfielder, Lloyd always had a knack for scoring, even as she covered much more of the field. Now Ellis would like her to focus on that completely, utilizing her powerful shot, her strong aerial game and her innate cunning to fill the next year with goals.
“If you tell her that, ‘OK, you need to score more goals,’ she’s going to score more goals,” veteran defender Becky Sauerbrunn said. “She’s going to do whatever it takes, and she’s going to have a chip on her shoulder.”
But she also offers something that her younger teammates do not: a deep reserve of big-game experience.
“It’s kind of like there’s all these different parts of the game — tactical, technical, blah, blah, blah — and then there’s just the ‘moments’ part, where you have to win or lose games, where you need people to step up,” Lloyd’s longtime teammate Megan Rapinoe said. “And she’s always been that person.”
Still, as she fights to remain relevant, Lloyd, a player responsible for so many big moments, has been trying to focus on the small ones, too.
“As you get older you get a little freaked out, and you want your life to slow down a little bit,” she said. “This final year or two, I want to live a little more in the present and enjoy each day and enjoy time with my friends and family and husband, and here with the team just enjoy the moment, whether the journey is easy or hard, savoring each day.”