Former Female Soccer Star Laments The Political Shift In US Women's Team – 'That Hurt Me To Leave Seeing What Was Coming'

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Carli Lloyd is not too pleased with the current US Women’s National Team, leveling major criticisms against the team for getting extremely excited over a disappointing goalless tie game with Portugal. 

The women’s team just barely qualified for the last 16 with the tie game, bringing major questions on the team's performance abilities. The team has consistently struggled to perform throughout the entire tournament, likely because it was only formed recently. Nonetheless, Portugal was especially messing with CNN saying it was “the most disjointed the team had looked so far.”

Despite the disappointing showing and barely being able to call what occurred positive, the women’s team was ecstatic at their mediocre performance. The team danced around merrily as though they managed to pull off the upset of the year. 

Lloyd did not have kind things to say about this showing, especially so with the performance that took place after the game.

“I have never witnessed something like that. There’s a difference between being respectful of the fans and saying hello to your family,” she said on Fox Sports. “But to be dancing, to be smiling. I mean, the player of the match was that post. You were lucky not to be going home right now.”

When she later spoke to Martin Rogers, a digital reporter for Fox Sports, she doubled down on her pessimistic take on the US Women’s National Teams performance. 

“I spoke up in that room, and I told them that you can’t take anything for granted — you have to work for everything that you get,” Lloyd said.“I just talked about what the mentality of this team has been about and passed down from generation to generation. But the problem is when you win, and you get things, winning has taken on a different meaning.”

“It is no longer we want to win because we want to win,” she continued. “No, we want everything that comes with winning, and we think we can just roll out and win games. And that’s not the case, and teams see that. They see the arrogance in the US and see that they’re not this unstoppable team. They see that they’re able to be broken down and beaten.”

As someone who played for the team for a solid 16 years, she noted that she had strong feelings for the team making it all the harder.

“It just hurts me. It hurt me at the end of my career, those last couple of years to see the change and the shift in that culture and in that mentality,” she said saddened. “That hurt me to leave seeing what was coming.”

The US Nationals Women’s Team has been no stranger to controversy, previously having a very large public outcry for lower pay compared to the men's team. They argued that because they netted better results they deserved just as much if not more pay than the men’s team despite pulling in only a fraction of the money compared to the men’s team. They eventually settled the lawsuit, getting a large paycheck, but have still continued to whine about inequality that they manufacture, per The New York Times. 

The team may have been successful but it seems that success is slowly being lost. Rather than trying their hardest to improve their gameplay, they've instead worked hard to make their public outcry unavoidable. 

Lloyd's criticisms are less harsh than they are sad. For someone to work so hard for so long for anything and then watch it quickly decay into a shell of what it once was is hard. Unfortunately, politics no longer lets anything female simply be female and instead mandates a political agenda and ruins what was once pure.