by Carli Lloyd
The Game
This game is big to the world of soccer. However, you need to go in and treat it like another game. That’s what you do best. Work the hardest, concentrate the most and be ready for anything. Don’t give up and let it all out (empty the tank). I really feel that you are going to win because you’re a better TEAM. They are individuals. Teams always beat individuals. But if you don’t win just make sure the Brazilians feel like they went through a torture chamber to get the win. Don’t give it to them easy. Pressure the hell out of them and fight them to the end. Right now the GOLD is in your hands. Only the Brazilians can take it off you. If you let them.
James Galanis
From the start, it’s clear that Marta and Cristiane, the dynamic stars of the Brazilian side, are bringing all they’ve got, and so is Hope Solo. I’ve seen Hope play lots of great games. I’ve never seen her more confident or sharper than she is tonight, on a rain-slickened field and in humidity that makes the air feel like oatmeal.
At her best, Marta is a magician in a canary-yellow shirt, making the ball appear Velcro-ed to her foot, and so it is in this epic game. In the seventy-second minute, she runs down a ball to the left of our goal, somehow eludes Heather Mitts and Kate Markgraf, and blasts a left-footed shot toward the near post from point-blank range. Hope dives left but raises her right arm as she does, almost as if she were a traffic cop, stopping traffic. The ball slams into her right arm and ricochets away.
Marta, World Player of the Year about a hundred times, cannot believe it. She buries her face in her hands.
It’s the save of the tournament, of the year—probably one of the greatest saves in Olympic history. It gives us an incredible lift. All game, Hope is snaring crosses in traffic, punching away threats. We have our best chance in the ninetieth minute, when Amy Rodriguez gets in behind the Brazilian defense with only Barbara, the Brazil keeper, left to beat. Barbara charges out, and Amy tries to chip it over her, but Barbara grabs it easily.
With all the back-and-forth chances, the drama keeps building, and now the game goes into two fifteen-minute overtimes, Brazil looking for its first major championship, the U.S. looking for its third Olympic gold in four tries. All I can think as overtime begins is:
This is why I train. This is why I run those hills in Laurel Acres, do those 800 repeats, the ninety-minute distance runs. It’s why I do all the body-weight exercises, why James and I keep pushing for more and better ways to get me fitter. I empty the tank in training, so the tank is never empty in games.
We are in Brazil’s end, six minutes into overtime, when Lauren Cheney, who has come on for Lindsay Tarpley, slips a short pass to me. I hold off a defender and backheel a ball to Amy, who takes a touch and threads it back to me under heavy pressure. I see a sliver of space and explode forward, take a touch, and let fly with my left foot, the ball launching low and hard, a skidding one-hopper heading toward the right corner. Barbara dives to her left.
She might get a fingernail on the ball. She cannot stop it. The ball is in the Brazilian goal, and I am running toward my teammates, arms pumping, joy pouring from me as I hug Boxxy first and then everybody else. I run over and hug Pia. She is the one who believed in me, who has started me every game this whole year, who wants me to be the hub of the U.S. attack.
There are still twenty-four minutes to play, and Brazil keeps the pressure on. Marta does a pullback move, spins left, and rips a shot just over the crossbar. The pressure on the defense and Hope is constant. In a counterattack in the final minutes, I get behind the defense and spank another left-footer, this one thudding off the far post. Brazil still has life. The clock is crawling; every second feels like ten seconds. Brazil has three straight corners at the end of the game. Marta’s inswinging ball finds Renata Costa near the far post, but her header hits the outside of the netting. On the final chance, Costa arches a ball in the box to Cristiane, who drives a low header that Hope stops. The whistle blows. We are jumping, screaming, crying, embracing. Nobody thought we could ever win without Abby, and now we’ve done it.
Hope runs out of the goal and wraps me in her arms, and neither of us has to say a word about the sweetness of this ending—Cup outcasts turned Olympic heroes. We are a team again, all in it together, fighting for each other, sacrificing for each other, with lots of perseverance and perspiration, not drama or dissent. It is a total team triumph, from Angela Hucles, our leading scorer up top, to Heather Mitts and the rest of our relentless defenders in the back, to Hope’s all-world effort in the net. You can’t single anybody out. We’ve all given everything we’ve got, for 120 minutes, the contributions coming from everywhere. If Lauren Cheney doesn’t slip me a deft pass with the outside of her foot seconds before the game-winner, if Amy Rodriguez doesn’t hold off two defenders and find me on a give-and-go, there is no gold medal–winning goal. That’s the beauty of soccer: so many little moves have to be made, so many little battles have to be won, to produce the ultimate victory. Our joy, a feeling that is as pure and good as the gold medal itself, is well earned and shared by everyone.
Later that night our team liaison in Beijing, a young Chinese woman whose nickname is Bean Bean, takes us to a private party. David Beckham is there, and I get to talk to him. The actor Vince Vaughn is there too. I get a photo with both of them. My gold medal is around my neck. It stays there for a long time.
A week after I return home, a parade is held in Delran in my honor, complete with the high school marching band, the Knights of Columbus, the VFW, and most every fire truck, police car, and EMS vehicle in town, along with hundreds of little kids in their soccer uniforms. My old coaches, Joe Dadura from the Strikers, Rudi Klobach from Delran High, and Glenn Crooks from Rutgers, are there too. It is Labor Day. The parade starts at Vermes Field, where I used to play, and heads down Tenby Chase Road to Conrow Road to the high school. I ride in the top of a fire truck, wearing a black dress and a gold medal, and wave until my arm hurts. My parents are also waving, in the back of a red convertible. The day winds up with a ceremony on the football field, where a bunch of politicians give speeches and everybody talks about me, and my parents and brother and sister are all sitting on the stage, a penalty kick away from Brian and me.
I don’t tell anybody about getting booted out of my own house right before the Olympics. It would kind of spoil the moment.
From start to finish, the event is a sweet, small-town tribute, and I appreciate the sentiment and the chance to share the Olympic achievement with so many people who have been there for me along the way. But the truth is that I don’t like being fussed over, and never have. I’m way more comfortable practicing volleys on Ark Road than listening to people celebrate me and tell me how great I am. I never want to be rude to anyone, but I am a person who likes her inner circle small and her gatherings intimate. I try to explain this to my parents when they begin to plan a post-parade party at the house.
“I know you want to include a lot of people and make it a big celebration, but I’d really prefer to have it just be close family and friends, since I don’t see them very often,” I tell my mother.
“Carli, so many people have shared in this and want to be a part of it. We can’t not include them,” my mother says.
I don’t want to start more dramas, so I don’t carry it much further.
More than anything I want the strife to go away and to be able to enjoy this time with my parents, brother, and sister. This is not how I want to go through my life, exiled from my own flesh and blood, people I love and have spent my whole life with.
Things seem to be improving a bit as the fall arrives. I sort of move back in, staying at home occasionally, but the friction is always quick to flare back up.
I realize I need to be out of the house for good and start looking for a place to buy, and ultimately find a nice townhome with a fireplace and clean, airy feel about it. I make a couple of trips back to my parents’ house to collect a few last items.
Three months after the exhilarating run at the Olympi
cs, it’s clear to me that my relationship with my parents is at an all-time low. I spend the first Thanksgiving of my life away from them. I am with Brian and his family, and I love them, but I still have so much sadness. As Christmas approaches I email my parents because I need some photos of me when I was young and they have my photo albums. I tell them they can leave them on the porch and I will pick them up. Nobody is home when I arrive. I walk up to the porch and see several big boxes of my things. My father has packed up my stuff and left it for me. In one of the boxes are the scrapbooks and binders he meticulously kept from the very beginning of my soccer career. Newspapers clippings, press releases, tournament results, awards.
Everything.
Next to the bags is a card and my Christmas gift, a set of pots and pans for my new home. I drop off my gift for them—a gift certificate to Cheesecake Factory—and lug the boxes to my car. I leave the pots and pans behind.
10
Letting Go of Gold
JAMES IS CONCERNED ABOUT ME, probably more concerned than he has been in almost five years of working together. It’s not so much the family drama as the way I look in training at the end of 2008 and early in 2009. I am putting in the time, training hard. But James doesn’t see the same intensity, the I’ll-prove-them-wrong edge that has driven me for so long.
“You are not training at full capacity. You’re not as mentally engaged as you need to be,” James says. “You’ve got to train harder and be fully committed mentally.”
I get a little defensive. It hasn’t happened often in my time with James, but he has never questioned my commitment before.
Not once.
“What do you mean, train harder? I’m here. I’m doing the work. I don’t think I’m slacking off.”
More than anyone I’ve ever met, James Galanis finds a way to be supportive and a hard-ass all at once. There have been times he criticized me pointedly and somehow I still felt as if I’d gotten a hug. That is not easy to pull off.
“You are doing the work, Carli, yes,” James says. “But it’s not the same way as you’ve always trained. I am watching closely, and I see a difference. I need you to get back to being the underdog.”
I wish I could say he is wrong, but he’s not. James knows exactly what the issue is, and so do I. It’s the Beijing afterglow. Suddenly, for the first time since I’ve been on the national team, I am the flavor-of-the-day for the media, getting attention that usually goes to Abby or Hope or Aly Wagner, that went to Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy and Kristine Lilly before that. I am named U.S. Soccer’s Player of the Year. I don’t think it goes to my head. I don’t want it to go to my head. But when you’re being celebrated as never before, it’s natural to stop and think, I guess I am pretty good. James goes right after it, treating these nascent, complacent thoughts as if they were a pack of termites ready to chew through the foundation we’ve worked so hard to build. He is happy to play the role of exterminator. He begins by scribbling a message on a little chalkboard in his basement, where I do off-season strength and fitness training.
The sign reads:
THE OLYMPICS ARE FORGOTTEN
James does everything but brand the words into my brain. It’s good that he does.
Things are a struggle for me from the outset of 2009. I am on fire in our first camp of the year in January, feeling fit and playing in top form, certain that I’ve put the afterglow issue behind me, but I lose my sharpness as camp goes on. Pia notices, of course.
“I don’t want you to lose your drive to be the best,” she says. “You have to stay switched on through every single training session.”
“I know you’re right,” I say. “I haven’t felt challenged. I’ve been kind of bored. I know I have to step it up.”
Camp finishes on a much better note, but there are a number of new players in the mix, especially in the midfield, and we don’t play our best in our annual visit to Portugal for the Algarve Cup, falling to Sweden on PKs in the final. Abby is still not quite back from her broken leg from the previous summer, and with another World Cup still two years away, it’s a low-key year for the national team, so my main focus is on my new team, the Chicago Red Stars, of Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS). I am one of the marquee players on the team, along with Lindsay Tarpley, Brazil’s Cristiane, and Megan Rapinoe, but it turns into a season-long nightmare, as we never really mesh. After winning only one of our first nine games, we never fully recover. I wind up playing a good deal of forward, but score just two goals in twenty games and feel out of my element almost the whole season. We finish 5-10-5 and don’t make the playoffs. I book out of Chicago in early August and head for the Jersey Shore, where I hang at my aunt Patti’s house and reconnect with Brian.
After a few days off, I get back to training with James. It’s just what I need to put a frustrating season behind me. I have started to make big changes in my diet, cutting out candy and sugar and almost all carbs, and I feel leaner and better already. It’s all good, until my phone rings one day. I am at home in my bedroom. I’ve just finished a monster workout with James. The caller is Pia Sundhage.
“Carli, I want to give you a heads-up before the official email goes out,” she says. “You don’t have a renewed contract [with U.S. Soccer] for 2009.” (Twice a year we either get renewed, not renewed, or bumped down a tier.) “If you do get a contract, it may not be Tier I [the top pay scale].”
I am stunned. I know I didn’t have a great season in Chicago, but not to be renewed by a coach who told me she thought I could be one of the best players in the world?
I am on the verge of a meltdown but try not to give that away.
“Okay. Can I ask why?”
“Well, you weren’t in your best form early in the year, and then the WPS season didn’t go the way you or I were figuring it would either. The consensus is that, for whatever reason, you are not the same impact player you were.
“Now, what happens from here is up to you. You will have plenty of chances in September, October, and December to show that you have improved your game and get your contract, but I wanted to let you know.”
I hang up the phone and think I am going to throw up. I am livid. I am sick. It feels as if my world is crashing all around me, my brain stuck on a nasty and self-critical refrain:
How could I have screwed this up? How could this be happening? A year ago I became a gold medal hero and the Player of the Year and now U.S. Soccer doesn’t want to renew my contract. Can anybody tell me how it has gotten to this point?
As angry as I am, as much as I might want to blame somebody or beat myself up, I know this is no time for self-pity. It is time to go to work as I never have before.
Without delay, James and I launch into two-a-day sessions, determined to pound me into the greatest shape I have ever been in. I run distance. Run sprints. Run hills and run-through drills. I am sore and miserable and exhausted, mentally and physically, as I push beyond thresholds I’ve never crossed before, but the hurt is accompanied by empowerment.
I am in the best condition of my life. I don’t think it. I know it. Between the workouts and my dietary changes, my confidence picks up, and even though I am anxious about the upcoming camp, I also am hell-bent on kicking butt and showing Pia how wrong it was not to renew me.
The underdog is back in a big way.
Before I leave for camp, James emails to say how fit I am and how proud he is that I did all the work without complaining.
“You are going to not only get a contract but also take over the WNT,” he says. “Don’t worry. Just keep working. We are all in. No other way.”
Camp starts at the training center in Carson, California, on September 21 and goes for twelve days. From the time I step on the field I am as sharp and confident as I’ve been in months. My mind is completely clear, unburdened by doubt or complication. One thing that happened after the Olympics, subconsciously I think, is that I felt I had to meet all these expectations people had—that I had to make magic happen on each possession. So instead
of playing simply, naturally, I would sometimes force things and take needless risks. Nothing can mess you up on a soccer field more than that.
Now I am free of that, and the difference is striking. Pia comes up to me after day two of camp.
“You are looking very fit, very good,” she says. “It’s good to see you back in top form.”
“I don’t want to go backwards again,” I say. “I’m hitting the delete button on last season. It’s a fresh start, and I feel like I’m ready to crush it.”
A few days later, I am leaving breakfast and I run into Pia again. She asks if we can talk.
“When I look at you now compared with the player I saw in the Algarve and in the WPS, the difference is truly night and day. How did this happen? It would help me to know how you did it.”
“It’s pretty simple, Pia. I got my ass kicked by my trainer for five weeks. I worked harder than I ever have in my life, so now I feel fit and confident, and I think that is what you are seeing.” I remind her of what I’ve told Greg and Jill and other coaches I’ve worked with through the years: a high level of fitness doesn’t come easily to me. Some players can do minimal training and go hard for ninety minutes. That is not me. When I do all the extra stuff that I need to do, it changes everything.
“Well, I am very happy for you,” Pia says. “You’ve shown me so much, and you deserve your contract, so we will get that done.”
I wind up getting traded to the Jersey team in WPS, Sky Blue FC, and that is more good news, because I get to be near home. There has been no thaw with my parents, but otherwise I am in a much better place than I was a few months ago. James doesn’t tell me this at the time, but he thinks getting knocked on my can was exactly what I needed.
