Carli Lloyd
Carli Lloyd (born July 16, 1982, Delran, New Jersey, U.S.) is an American association football (soccer) player who, as one of the sport’s leading midfielders, helped the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) win two Olympic gold medals (2008 and 2012) and two World Cups (2015 and 2019).
Lloyd started kicking a soccer ball at the age of five and resisted her parents’ wish that she embrace ballet or another form of dance. Under the tutelage of her high-school coach, Lloyd developed her all-around ability as a midfield playmaker. She won accolades on the Scarlet Knights at Rutgers University, where she was voted to the All-Big East First Team all four years (a Rutgers record). She graduated (2006) as the Scarlet Knights’ all-time leader in shots, points (117), and goals (50).
While she was still a student, Lloyd played in the professional United Soccer League’s development league. She signed in 2008 with the Women’s Professional Soccer league’s Chicago Red Stars but left after one season to join the Sky Blue FC in New Jersey. Following two seasons with the Atlanta Beat, Lloyd in 2013 started for the Western New York Flash in the newly created National Women’s Soccer League. She was traded to the Houston Dash in 2014. Four years later Lloyd returned to Sky Blue FC (later renamed NJ/NY Gotham FC). Though she was ostensibly a central midfield player, her predatory instincts as a striker were often used either in a double-spearhead role or in the “hole” behind the farthest forward in front of midfield.
Lloyd made her mark for the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) Under-21 squad with four straight Nordic Cup titles (2002–05) prior to making her debut for the full USWNT against Ukraine on July 10, 2005. Her first international goal came against Taiwan the following year. She played in the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup, where the United States finished third, and four years later the USWNT captured the silver medal after narrowly losing to Japan. At the 2015 World Cup tournament, Lloyd crowned a solid performance as team captain with a dynamic display of accuracy in the final match, also against Japan, in which she scored a hat trick (three goals) in the first 16 minutes to pave the way for the United States to defeat the defending champions 5–2. She was rewarded with the Golden Ball as the tournament’s standout player and received the Silver Shoe for having tied the leading scorer with six goals and one assist. In 2019 she competed in her fourth World Cup, and the USWNT easily won the tournament.
Lloyd also helped the USWNT win two Olympic gold medals, scoring the winning goal against Brazil in the gold medal match at the 2008 Beijing Games and registering both U.S. strikes in the final against Japan at the 2012 London Olympic Games. She was also a member of the USWNT squad that lost in the quarterfinals of the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, finishing without a medal for the first time in its Olympics history. The team entered the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic) as one of the favorites, but it was forced to settle for a bronze medal. Later in 2021 Lloyd announced that she would retire from both international and club play by the end of the year.
In 2019 Lloyd joined several USWNT teammates in a lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. Citing gender discrimination, the team sought pay equal to that of the U.S. men’s soccer team; LFG (2021) is a documentary about the lawsuit. In 2022 a settlement was reached, and, as part of the deal, players were to receive $24 million. In addition, the federation promised equal pay for the men’s and women’s teams at future events. In 2016 Lloyd released the memoir When Nobody Was Watching: My Hard-Fought Journey to the Top of the Soccer World (written with Wayne Coffey).