Lloyd maintains focus for U.S. amid star turn

For years, intense meditation has been part of Carli Lloyd’s soccer game, as important as her emphasis on fitness. Getting alone in a room, finding the moment, the big moment in a game, conjuring up scenarios that include the ball on her foot.

On Tuesday night when she was about to take a penalty kick for the United States in the 69th minute, with a Women’s World Cup semifinal hinging on the moment, Lloyd had been there before.

“I basically zoned out the entire world except for the net, the ball and myself,” Lloyd said Wednesday.

After her perfect kick against Germany, the 32-year-old set up a second American goal in the 84th minute with a nifty run and pass. Nothing new about that. In the 2008 Olympics, Lloyd scored the gold medal game-winner. In the 2012 Olympics, she had both goals in the gold medal game after starting those Games on the bench. This time, her role seemed miscast early in the tournament, with too many deep defensive responsibilities, which don’t play to her strength. Now, she has taken over, with goals in three straight games.

When a couple of teammates had to sit out a second-round game, changes had to be made and suddenly Lloyd was in her familiar attacking midfield role.

“She’s shown that she was kind of like in a cage,” 1999 World Cup goalkeeper Briana Scurry said. “Now as soon as she was let out, you had a completely different Carli Lloyd.”

Scurry is most familiar with penalty kicks from the other side.

“I saw a very familiar look in her eyes,” Scurry said of Lloyd’s kick on Tuesday. “I actually tweeted, ‘Lloyd’s not going to miss this.’ I just knew. I was on the team when she first came in. She’s as big a big-game player as I’ve seen. A lot of great players wither on the vine, become wallflowers, when the pressure is the biggest.” But not Lloyd. “I think she envisions herself as being the margin of victory in big games,” said Tony DiCicco, who coached the U.S. to the 1999 World Cup title and is a Fox Sports commentator at this one. “It’s not a given, as we saw (Tuesday) — the cameras caught her face and how intense she was. She had blocked everything else out. The bigger the game, the more she wants to perform.” Yes, she sees it coming. “It sounds pretty funny, but over the years and definitely over the last four years, I’ve taken that visualization part to another level,” Lloyd said Wednesday as the U.S. team traveled from Montreal to Vancouver, where the Americans will face Japan in the World Cup final on Sunday night. “I’ve basically visualized so many different things on the field, making these big plays, scoring goals.”

It was no coincidence that the mostquoted remark from the U.S. camp after 2-0 win against Germany came from Lloyd: “We didn’t just come here to make the final, we came to win it. No one is going to remember a secondplace team.”

James Galanis, Lloyd’s longtime personal coach, returned a call from Athens, Greece, where he is vacationing. He said he talked to Lloyd 15 minutes after the semifinal.

“The first thing she said was, ‘I got this,’ ” Galanis said. She was referring to Sunday’s final. Galanis said he talked to her about putting the semifinal heroics in the past.

“Don’t worry, I already have,” Galanis said Lloyd told him.