by Carli Lloyd
“What do you think of your last two games?” she says.
“I think I did what I needed to do when I came on,” I say.
“What do you think you need to do to get back in the starting lineup?” she asks.
“The same things I have been doing,” I say.
“How would you compare yourself to Lauren Cheney as a player?” she says.
This strikes me as a very odd question, an inappropriate question. I don’t know what she wants to hear from me. I just tell her the truth.
“First of all, Cheney and I are completely different players with different strengths. Second of all, I don’t like to worry about other people or compare myself to them. I worry about myself and what I can bring to the team.”
Pia nods approvingly and again seems as if she wants to build me up.
“You were the best player we had in qualifying. I hope you know that,” she says.
I thank her, and before I leave I want to tell her one more thing—that the bad half against China was not going to define me, any more than the missed PK was going to define me.
“It hurt my confidence, and I held on to it for a long time—too long—but I am fine now, and I am ready to fight back,” I tell her. “I won’t let you or the team down. I will fight and keep fighting, and I will win this battle.”
Pia’s jaw drops, in an almost cartoonish way. I don’t know why. Maybe she’s impressed that I said all the right things. Who knows? She tells me again that she is going to need all three of us in midfield, and that sometimes I may play with Boxxy, other times with Lauren. Sometimes I will be attacking, and other times I may have to sit back and mostly defend.
“I’m ready to do whatever needs to be done,” I say.
I return home from Utah for one last blast of training with James and go at it as hard as ever. I land on Saturday and am on the field playing against a Universal Soccer Academy boys’ team a day later. All week I do what James calls “physical power” training, with sets of sprints from 100 meters up to 800 meters, along with hill work, upper-body circuits, and distance runs every day. Heather Mitts, my teammate and fellow Universal Soccer student, is doing some fine-tuning with James and thinks I am overdoing it in a big way.
“You aren’t going to be able to get through the Olympics if you keep up this pace,” Heather tells me. “You will never last. You are going to burn out. I really think you need to back off.”
I know Heather means well, and I know I must look like a maniac, pushing so hard before the biggest tournament of the year. But I also know this is exactly what I need . . . for my mind as well as my body.
I don’t let up once I get to England. I have to secretly go out and do these workouts. My first full day there is an off day for the team. I go for a ten-mile run and then the next day do three three-minute runs at 70 percent effort, 80 percent, and then 90 percent—nine runs in total, all on a treadmill. I also do doggie sprints behind a building near our hotel after a training session in the evening. We have a team outing to a medieval castle. It’s cool, but I am too tunneled in on the present to wrap my head around the Middle Ages. When we get back, Pia comes into my room and officially lets me know what I already know . . . that I will not be starting in our first game, against France.
“This is not about you doing anything wrong. You’ve been playing well. We’re going to need you, so stay ready,” she says.
“I’m ready,” I say.
James tells me, “If you want to be ready—truly ready—then you need to start visualizing. Start the process a few days before the game. Be quiet and centered with mental images of playing this game against France. See yourself on the field. See the game unfolding in your mind. Trust me, it will make a big difference.”
So I start visualizing more intently than I ever have in my life. I sit in my room, shut my eyes, listen to the music, and visualize. I go on walks and visualize. I visualize that our team is down against France and I come on to score the winning goal.
All the extra work, mental and physical, has done just what I hoped it would. I feel strong and fit and confident again. We have a scrimmage against Norway and we win 2–0, and I am on top of my game, getting lots done.
“You were awesome today, Carli,” Heather tells me.
“Thanks. I feel good,” I say.
We travel up to Glasgow, Scotland, for our opener against France, and it starts about as badly as it can. We fall behind 2–0 in the opening fourteen minutes, and then Boxxy goes down a couple of minutes later. She’s been battling a calf injury for the past few weeks now, and you could see in training that she was not 100 percent. Boxxy tries to gut it out, but the grimace on her face makes it obvious there is no way she can continue.
Pia summons me off the bench, and after the briefest of warm-ups, I am in our Olympic midfield sooner than I ever imagined. Abby scores on a header off of a Pinoe corner, and Alex pops a bouncing ball over the French keeper’s head, and we’re even before the half is over.
Playing holding mid, I am careful not to do too much or get caught upfield too far. I am keeping my touches to a minimum, focusing on strong tackling and clean passes. Ten minutes into the second half, Pinoe tracks down a loose ball that the French have given away, near the right sideline. I am pushing upfield, with some space in front of me, and when Pinoe sees it she delivers a perfect square ball to my feet. I settle in with my right foot and follow with a quick one-two that ends with a flick with the outside of my right foot, and in an instant I am clear of a closing defender. I have just enough room, about twenty-five yards out on the right, and I let it rip. Baseball sluggers talk about how great it feels when they hit a ball in their sweet spot. This ball is in my sweet spot. It rises like a tracer and rockets into the upper left corner of the net. We’re up 3–2. I run toward the U.S. bench and go into a skid and get hugs from Pinoe and everybody.
“I wanted to show the bench some love,” I joked to a reporter later.
Alex scores another goal off a scramble in front, and we’ve answered another challenge in a big way. Afterwards, somebody asks Pia about the impact I had and she says, “She changed the game. She didn’t start the game, but she finished the game.”
Back in my room, I have my own perspective.
I guess this visualization stuff works, I think.
After a typically exciting tournament night—ice bath, stretch, hydrate—I go for a light twenty-minute run the next day to loosen up and get ready for our second game, against Colombia, a rapidly improving team with several extremely dangerous players. Colombia comes at us with feet flying—and with sucker punches too. (Abby Wambach does not get her black eye on the handshake line.) It’s a chippy game, but you can’t get lured into payback or playing with reckless anger. The best revenge is always to win. In the thirty-third minute, Pinoe strikes a high, bending ball from distance after Alex picks a Colombian pocket, and Abby makes it 2–0 with a sliding, angled right-footer with under twenty to play. I have spent the whole game doing my midfield housekeeping, winning balls and distributing the ball quickly. Just a few minutes after Abby’s goal, I play a ball ahead to Lauren Cheney, who finds Pinoe to her right. I see a channel up the middle in front of me, and off I go, a full sprint into space. Pinoe tucks a perfect ball on the floor to me, in stride, and after a touch in the box, I slide it under the onrushing keeper into the left side of the goal.
Two games ago, I was a veteran who had lost her starting spot and whose Olympic role was murkier than the English Channel. Now we have two victories behind us and I have two goals behind me.
Chester, Pennsylvania?
I don’t even remember playing a game there.
After winning a hard-fought battle with North Korea on a goal by Abby, we move into the quarterfinals against New Zealand. It’s another scrappy game, and I am a bit off at the outset, but I play my way into the game and keep up my high work rate from box to box. Abby finishes a pass from Alex to give us a 1–0 lead in the twenty-seventh minute and then, with about
twenty minutes left to play, I settle a bouncing ball and take a touch as I start upfield. I see an opening up the middle, where Alex is making a run. I chip a forty-yard ball, and Alex gets in behind the defense and is alone on the Kiwi keeper, Jenny Bindon, who rushes off her line and goes into a slide, with Alex sprinting at her full blast. Alex tries to leap over her, but her left knee slams into Bindon’s face, and the two of them go sprawling as the ball trickles away. The keeper takes the worst of it, by far, but Alex has to come off. Pia replaces her with Sydney Leroux. Alex is one of those strikers who scores in bunches; when she is confident and making those galloping runs of hers, she can be a huge threat, and with seven goals in our last eight games, she is in a good place right now. We don’t want to lose her, for sure, but Syd steps right in and buries her first Olympic goal to seal a 2–0 victory.
It’s not our prettiest game, but we keep advancing, and Hope and the defense deliver our third straight shutout. We move into the semifinals with Canada in Old Trafford, home of Manchester United and one of the most storied soccer stadiums in the world. The Canadians know us well, and they are playing at a high level under their new coach, John Herdman. Nobody forgets the scrap they gave us in our overtime victory in the quarterfinals in the Beijing Games, and they have the ever-dangerous Christine Sinclair.
Three different times in Old Trafford, Sinclair gives Canada a one-goal lead. Three times, we answer. The game seems to get more intense by the minute. It is not always a showcase for the Olympic ideals. In the fifty-fifth minute, I am on the ground in the box, and suddenly there is a foot stomping on my head, driving my head into the pitch.
It’s as dirty a play as you will ever see. A stud on the bottom of the boot slams into my temple, maybe an inch from my eye. The culprit is Canadian veteran Melissa Tancredi, who commits seven fouls in the game, including one in the first minute. Tancredi’s foot stomp—which should’ve been a red card—somehow goes unnoticed.
I get up and keep going, and that’s what our team does too. Pinoe scores our first two goals, the first one on a curling corner kick that sneaks inside the near post and the second on a wicked, angled strike from distance. We’re still down a goal in the seventy-eighth minute when Erin McLeod, the Canadian goalkeeper, goes up to grab a corner kick and falls to the ground to secure it. McLeod, like virtually all keepers, often takes longer than the six seconds the rules allow a keeper to get rid of the ball. Abby is counting loudly—“One, two, three, four . . .” to make sure that the referee, Christina Pedersen of Norway, is aware of McLeod’s tardiness. McLeod dribbles the ball a few times and lets go with a dropkick, and Pedersen blows her whistle.
Nobody knows what is going on, until it becomes apparent Pedersen has called McLeod for delay of game, giving us an indirect kick. I have never seen this call made in a game, let alone a game of this magnitude. I am not worrying about it, though. I got my head stomped and there was no call.
The ref owes us one.
Tobin Heath touches the ball on the kick, and Pinoe rips a blast toward goal. As Canadian defender Marie-Eve Nault turns away to shield her face from the shot, it caroms off her arm. Pedersen blows her whistle again, this time for a PK. The Canadians are enraged. Abby is calm, stepping to the spot and knocking a low shot inside the left post to tie the game, her fifth goal in five Olympic games.
Abby very nearly wins it for us about six minutes later, when Alex makes a cross from the left flank, toward the right of the goal. Abby is crashing the net hard and gets the ball on her foot, and I am sure the ball is going in the net, but Abby’s sliding shot veers just wide of the near post and into overtime the semifinal goes.
All I can think of as we prepare for two fifteen-minute overtimes is that this is what I train for, to be able to keep pushing on, finding gears I don’t know I have. In games like this, where the outcome can swing on the smallest of events—a tackle at midfield, a high-pressure run that forces a sloppy pass, a sprint to keep a ball in bounds—the last thing I ever want is to feel I didn’t leave it all out there. It’s a cliché, I know: give it your all, never say die . . . all of that.
But you know what?
This is exactly what winning championships takes . . . keeping the foot on the pedal even when you are on your last drop of gas. So I dig deep. We all dig deep. I can’t tell you for sure that we want this game more than the Canadians, because their players have shown great heart the whole game, but I can tell you this:
We are going to do whatever it takes to win. We won’t stomp on any Canadian heads, but we will battle to the end.
Near the end of the first overtime, Canada’s Diana Matheson makes a good run down the right side and crosses to Sinclair, who is gunning for number four when Rachel Buehler breaks it up just in time, forcing a corner kick. At the end of the next overtime, and after good chances for both teams, Alex gets space and arches a cross to Abby. Abby goes up. I feel as though I’ve seen this movie a thousand times in my career. I know the ending by heart:
Abby goes higher than anybody else, using all of her height and power and skill.
Abby’s forehead meets the airborne ball.
Abby snaps her head forward.
The ball rips into the goal.
All of that happens, except the last part: Abby’s header bounds off the crossbar. The game stays tied. We move into the third minute of extra time, 123 minutes into the match, when Heather O’Reilly, who came on for Lauren Cheney in the 101st minute, gets off a cross from the right side. There is a crowd in front. I see Alex measure it and go up, a pink headband rising above the fray, connecting with the ball, knocking a looping header right over McLeod’s hand, into the net.
It is our first lead of the whole game, and a very good time to get it—seconds before Pedersen looks at her watch and signals the game’s end.
The Canadians are understandably bitter, especially Sinclair, who was so brilliant throughout.
“We feel like we didn’t lose, we feel like it was taken from us,” Sinclair tells the media later. “It’s a shame in a game like that that was so important, the ref decided the result before it started.”
I’m not buying the conspiracy theory, and not giving it a moment’s thought. We have more important things ahead of us—such as a return engagement with Japan. In the 2007 World Cup, we lost to the Brazilians and then got another shot at them in Beijing in the Olympic gold medal game.
In 2011 we lost to the Japanese in the World Cup, and now we get another shot at them in the final in London. It’s the same scenario that we had with Brazil in 2007 and 2008. I like the symmetry.
Wembley Stadium is one of those holy places in sports, a building you walk into and feel the history pouring out of every one of the 90,000 red seats. The current Wembley only dates to 2007, but it’s on the same patch of North London land as its predecessor, still home to the English national team and still the site of the biggest football game of the year in England, the Football Association (FA) Challenge Cup championship. So, to me, Wembley is Wembley.
And I am thrilled and honored to be here.
After a day of rest following the Canada marathon, we have a light training session and go over final preparations for the Japanese. It’s our fourth meeting of the year against them, so there don’t figure to be any major surprises. We know how good the Japanese are on the ball and how they like to attack defenses in precise, quick-footed waves. They are masters of the one-touch pass, and we have to stay organized.
The biggest adjustment for me in this final is returning to my regular position as an attacking midfielder. Boxxy’s injury has healed, and she has returned to the lineup at holding mid, so that frees me up to attack more. I am all for that.
Maybe it’s the historic setting, or the gold medal on the line, or the expectations I have now that I am back at attacking mid, but I am a bundle of nerves for this Olympic final. I have hardly been nervous at all in the previous games. Now it’s as if every nerve ending in my body is plugged in.
We board the team
bus from the Olympic Village, and I head to my usual seat, a couple of rows from the back on the right. Hope is in the seat across from me, the way she always is. When you look at team photos, especially candid ones, Hope and I always seem to be next to each other, and it’s no accident; the bond we forged through the World Cup ordeal five years before only gets stronger. More than anybody else on the team, she is there for me, and I know she always will be. That counts for everything in my world.
We arrive at Wembley about ninety minutes before kickoff. James, of course, has sent me his usual get-your-mind-right email. It centers me and calms me. I reread it on the bus. It’s almost a meditative exercise by now, like listening to a harp or the sound of the sea. It’s so easy before big games for your mind to race and get so cluttered that you go out and try to do way too much.
Here’s what James says:
Ms. Lloyd,
I felt that I owe you another email. The purpose of my previous email was to keep you focused and set your mind to work on a day-by-day type of thinking program. As it turns out that strategy worked to perfection and you were able to not only meet all the goals I set for you but you actually crushed all the goals I set for you.
Today is another day and new goals are set for you. Your goal for today is to blank out the world and zone in on everything that is happening between the lines on the field. To blank out everything and be the hardest worker, the quickest thinker, the most efficient, most creative and most dangerous player on the field.
I know that these goals may seem like a lot but they are really not. They are not because it’s what you have been doing, with the exception of “most dangerous.” Because of your defensive role you have had the opportunity to be “the hardest worker, the quickest thinker, the most efficient and most creative” and now with the attacking role you have been presented the opportunity to add the “most dangerous” tag onto your already super impressive showing at this Olympics.
