Carli Lloyd on her criticism of the USWNT: ‘I simply didn’t like what I saw’

Carli Lloyd says she has thought often over the past two weeks why her commentary about the U.S. women’s national team at the World Cup prompted so much attention. Sitting in her hotel room in Sydney, a couple of hours prior to covering Spain’s 2-1 win semifinal over Sweden in her now-familiar role as a studio analyst for Fox Sports, Lloyd offered her perspective.

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“This wasn’t anything that was scripted,” Lloyd said Tuesday morning. “This was a reaction to what I was seeing, what I was feeling, what came from my heart. I poured my heart and soul into this team for 17 years. I came into (the USWNT) not understanding how hard you have to work and learned how hard from the players that had come before me who instilled that mentality and DNA within the team. If I was going to stay on the main team, I had to work hard every single day. It’s probably one of the most unhealthy environments someone could place themselves in but one of the most rewarding as well, and I would do it over again in a heartbeat.

“I was at the tail end of what I saw was a regression with the team, which wasn’t good enough in Tokyo (at the Olympics, where the U.S. took bronze). The team was disjointed, was not a unit, and the coaching was not what this team needed. So I saw this, I felt this, I experienced this. I wasn’t truly confident in this team winning the World Cup. That’s not because of the lack of talent or the lack of players wanting to win. Every player wants to win. But there are certain steps and processes that you have to go through in order to win. There’s a certain formula that a championship team has.

“So I think maybe I was the only one brave enough to say it how it is,” Lloyd continued. “I’ve always been somebody that is