When Nobody Was Watching

by Carli Lloyd

  Yes, he did.

  Truly, he did.

  I look around the field, and it’s almost as if a tidal wave of euphoria is going to sweep me away. How often in life do you think and dream about something for so long—in this case more than half my life—and then have it come true?

  I am on the U.S. Women’s National Team. I am not just in the camp, not just being checked out. I am on the roster.

  I am in disbelief.

  I can’t wait to share the news with James. I can’t wait to tell Brian and my parents.

  The equipment manager comes over and tells me I need to pick out a uniform number. I am given the available options and decide on 22 because my cousin Jaime wore it. (I will change to 5 for my second game, and later switch to 11, before getting the number I wanted all along—10.)

  I don’t wear Jaime’s clothes anymore, but I still want to be like her.

  The night before the game, I am a nervous wreck. I wonder if I am even going to be able to play. Will I trip on a bootlace running out for warm-ups? Will I be able to make a touch without knocking it halfway to Mount Hood? I call James for reassurance; I know he’ll say the exact right thing because he always does. We’ve been working together eighteen months, and he knows my psyche better than I do.

  “It’s the same game and you are the same player,” James says. “Think of all the training we’ve done to get to this point. I guarantee nobody on the team has put in greater effort or commitment to get to this position.

  “Don’t overthink it. Just go out and play. Let your training do the talking. If the coach calls for you, keep it simple in the beginning and take more and more risks as things go on. No matter what, be the hardest-working player on the field and walk off knowing that you emptied the tank.”

  Before we hang up, James has a few final words.

  “Whether you play the full ninety or you don’t play at all, I am proud of you—as a student and as a person. Remember, this is just the starting point. We are going to keep working, and you are going to get better and better and better.”

  James’s words are a big comfort, but I still have a restless night of sleep and can’t stop thinking about what it will be like to put my kit on and see the 22 jersey with the name LLOYD on top of it. My friends Nandi Pryce and Danielle Fotopoulos take turns trying to calm me down. In the pregame, I feel completely gassed just doing basic warm-up drills; my adrenaline is running on overdrive, burning through my energy supply.

  I take a seat on the bench, and it doesn’t take long to figure out this is not going to be a game full of drama. Early in the second half, we are already up 4–0 when Aly Wagner, our attacking midfielder, chips a perfect ball to Tiffeny, who is making a run on the left side. Tiffeny controls and sees that the Ukrainian keeper, Veronika Shulha, is well off her line; she pops a left-footed ball over Shulha’s head into the unguarded net, an artful goal from an artful player. The crowd goes nuts, and Tiffeny celebrates and cradles the ball that makes her only the sixth U.S. woman to reach the 100-goal mark. Just one year earlier, she had quit the team over philosophical differences with April. When Greg Ryan took over, he brought Tiffeny back. It’s an important reminder that every coach views the game differently and that different coaches have their own flavor preferences when it comes to players.

  You can’t control a coach’s preferences, but what you can do, as James never tires of telling me, is make up your mind to outwork everybody.

  A minute or two after Tiffeny scores her historic goal, Greg Ryan looks down the bench.

  “Carli, start warming up,” he says. I peel off my warm-ups and begin the soccer substitute ritual, stretching and twisting and running, back and forth over the same sliver of sideline. At the next stoppage of play, Greg tells me to go in for Aly. I am standing on the edge of the Merlo Field pitch, trying to breathe and remembering James’s words.

  Just go out and play . . . Let your training do the talking . . . Keep it simple.

  Play finally stops. It is the sixty-fourth minute.

  Aly comes off, and I give her a quick hug and run out into the midfield. Play resumes. I get involved quickly. I make a couple of tackles and connect on a few short passes. The nerves gradually recede. Soon I am not first-cap Carli anymore—I am just a soccer player. (A “cap” is an on-field appearance with the national team.) Minutes go by and I start taking more risks, making a backheel pass and taking on people. As time winds down I beat a defender and make a quick run up the middle and thread a ball to Heather O’Reilly, a fellow New Jerseyan and the youngest player on the team. Heather has already scored not more than a few minutes earlier, and it looks as if this might be another one, but her shot goes just wide.

  The referee blows the whistle three times, signaling the end of the match, and as Tiffeny Milbrett gets ready to be honored and interviewed by the press, I grab a ball to commemorate the occasion. Everybody signs it. Somebody writes, “The first of many.” I like the sound of that.

  Even before my first cap, 2005 is shaping up as a game-changer of a year. A new coach takes over the U-21s, and I get an invite to training camp in preparation for another Nordic Cup. (The rules allow each team to bring in a couple of over-age players, and I am one of them.) The coach’s name is Jill Ellis. She has a great reputation, having built UCLA into a national power that went to seven straight College Cups. Being on the West Coast, Jill doesn’t see the top players in the East that much, so she consults with Julie Shackford, the Princeton coach and Jill’s best friend, to get the rundown.

  “Julie was always telling me about this player at Rutgers who would carve them up when Princeton played them,” Jill says. “She said, ‘She’s a one-man wrecking crew. Her name is Carli Lloyd and she just takes us apart.’ So that was the first time I heard Carli’s name.”

  When Jill took over the U-21 team, she checked back with Julie and asked her if she should bring me into camp.

  “Oh my gosh, yes. You definitely want to bring her in,” Julie said.

  Jill tells me later that she was intrigued by my technical proficiency and comfort on the ball, and by my ruggedness. She is the daughter of a renowned British soccer coach, John Ellis, who moved the family to Virginia when Jill was fifteen. Jill grew up playing and coaching in the Northeast—Region I of the Olympic Development Program.

  “From the beginning I noticed that the kids from eastern New York and New Jersey, they just had this way about them,” Jill says. “They had an aggressiveness, a confidence that bordered on arrogance, and I thought from the start that that was very apparent in Carli.”

  We steamroll through the Nordic Cup for a record seventh straight victory, beating Germany 3–1 in the third game to win our group and then blowing out Norway, 4–1, in the final. The German coach tells Jill that we are one of the best U-21 teams he has ever seen.

  At seventeen years old, Lauren Cheney is a force up top and opens the scoring in the final, before I knock a ball to Heather O’Reilly, who freezes a defender with a stutter-step and drives a left-footer into the right side from twelve yards out to make it 2–0 early in the second half.

  Cheney makes a nice cross to me about fifteen minutes later, and I knife through two defenders and toe-poke a shot into the corner for 3–0. I finish my best Nordic Cup with three goals and two assists in the four games, and not long after, I get my first payday as a soccer player—a $5,000 Athlete Support Grant from the U.S. Olympic Committee.

  The money does not change my life. I do not immediately go out house- or car-shopping. Still, it’s a huge deal to me, an affirmation that things are heading in a good direction and that I am actually finding my way into adulthood. I celebrate by buying a flat-screen TV for my room at home. I’m not home to watch it much, but it feels good to know I bought it with money I made from playing soccer. I am still a young woman in a big hurry, and I want this to happen now. It’s almost a daily wrestling match to keep reminding myself of Danielle Fotopoulos’s words of counsel at my first national team camp about how hard it is t
o break through, how you have to keep grinding it out—or, as James tells me over and over, how I have to keep emptying the tank every time I play.

  It sounds as simple as tic-tac-toe, I know, but the whole process is fraught with so much anxiety at times that I need the constant reminders.

  And nobody knows it better than James. Before every training camp or major competition, he writes me a long email, offering positive reinforcement and underscoring the same key themes. I read them over and over, hardwiring them into my brain. It’s such a blessing to have a trainer who is so wise and giving, a trainer I can trust totally.

  “All players at the national level have talent; it’s the ones with character who end up making it,” James writes before I head off to a camp in 2005. “Character that shows that you are willing to do whatever it takes to win. Character that shows that you will play as the coach asks and [you’re] a player that gives the coach undivided attention when in the huddle and at team meetings. It is important that you show all these signs although they are not things you do with the ball.

  “Make sure you show the coaches that you are there to be a winner and not another talent going to waste.”

  I get my second career cap in Charleston, South Carolina, where we play Mexico in a friendly in late October. I come on in the second half for Aly Wagner, and with a 3–0 lead already on the board (thanks to a goal by Kristine Lilly and two by Abby Wambach), I am ready to heed James’s words and show character by doing whatever needs to be done to seal the victory. We have not allowed a goal for the entire year and don’t want to mess this up in our final game of 2005, so we stay compact and fend off the Mexicans’ attempts to get an attack going.

  In the closing minutes, I am controlling the ball near the 18-yard line when I see Shannon MacMillan making a run on the right. I slip the ball through to her, and Shannon hits a hard shot that the Mexican keeper makes a kick-save on. About a minute later, it’s my turn to fire, also from the right side of the penalty area. I hit a hard shot as I am knocked to the ground. The keeper blocks it, and I pop up and one-time the rebound, only to be stopped again.

  The referee is about to blow his whistle to end it when I get the ball again, now about thirty yards out. I love to shoot from distance. It can’t be anything but good for me to show Greg Ryan the kind of threat I can be in midfield. I take a full-throttle swing at the ball, coming through so hard that I completely lose my balance. The ball skies high enough that it could hit a seagull, and I go down. I land on my left wrist. I hear it crack. The whistle blows and the game is over, and I am off to see team doctors and get an X-ray. I don’t need pictures to know what happened. My wrist is broken. The pain is throbbing. I am out for six weeks, and I am sick about it. The only good thing is that we have no more camps or games, so my bum wrist and I head farther south to spend time with Brian at golf school in Florida.

  One doctor I visit thinks I should have surgery, but the U.S. Soccer medical staff is convinced that it will fully heal on its own and all I need to do is put a cast on it, which sounds good to me.

  I want to get back training and playing as soon as I can because 2006 is going to be a big year. We begin with a January camp and a trip to China, the start of a process that will have a major impact on who Greg Ryan selects to play in the World Cup in 2007. I don’t have a great read on what Greg thinks of me as a player. I do know that he has a defensive mentality and that I am going to have to prove to him that I am a full-service, two-way midfielder. The proving needs to start right away. I can’t leave any doubt.

  6

  Coach’s Crosshairs

  I AM A WORRIER BY NATURE. I could’ve majored in overthinking at Rutgers if it were an option. My default position is to replay things as often as I dribble through little orange cones, which is often, and the matter that I am overanalyzing at the moment is this:

  Why does Greg Ryan hate me?

  Why is he always on my case, and why can’t I ever seem to please him?

  It’s the beginning of 2006 and my wrist is healed, but my soccer self-esteem feels as if it’s been flattened by an eighteen-wheeler. We have a camp in January, and I make the roster to travel to China for the Four Nations Cup, my first international trip with the full national team. The good news ends there. I barely play at all, and when I do I feel as though Greg Ryan is all over my case, mostly about my defense.

  That is his highest priority. He is a coach whose preferred style is lockdown defense on one end and bruising, direct offense on the other. I know how important it is to defend; I’ve known it ever since Chris Petrucelli cut me precisely because I wasn’t up to his standards in that area. James has been pounding that into me from day one on Ark Road. Still, an attacking midfielder is supposed to attack, no? Shouldn’t she be able to carve the defense up and spread the ball around the field and be a threat in the attacking third? Greg seems to be completely unimpressed with what I can offer when I am on the ball.

  “You can’t give her so much room.”

  “You can’t stab in like that.”

  “You can’t just play in one direction when you are in the midfield.”

  These are things I hear constantly from Greg Ryan, whose prototype of an ideal midfielder seems to be Shannon Boxx, who is very much a defensive-minded player. All I seem to hear is “Great job, Shannon,” and, “Way to defend, Shannon,” for weeks on end. The coach is right: Shannon is a defensive workhorse, and she is incredibly valuable because of that. I am not questioning that at all.

  I am questioning where that leaves me with Greg Ryan, and so I commence with the overthinking, stressing over my lack of playing time and trying to figure out how I can change Greg’s mind. I get back to the States, and James goes to work on me.

  “Don’t worry about what you can’t control, mate,” James says. “Just keep emptying the tank and getting better. Everything else will take care of itself.”

  So I get back into the office with James, but as I do I have some business stuff to sort out. I’m under contract with U.S. Soccer now and also have endorsement interest from Nike, Puma, and Adidas. The money is relatively modest, but symbolically it’s another sign that I am no longer just a kid who loves the game; I am a professional soccer player. I know I need an agent to handle this for me, and it just so happens that Rich Fornaro, my mother’s cousin, is an attorney. My mother works for Rich in his office in Hamilton, New Jersey. Rich is a sharp guy, a very likable guy. He has been handling some of the initial business offerings informally, but now it is time to firm things up. My parents have no doubt that Rich is the man for the job, and I’m good with it. “It’s great that we can keep this in the family and have someone representing you who we can completely trust,” my father tells me. Then he calls James.

  “My wife and I have discussed it, and we’ve decided Rich has got to be the one to represent Carli,” my father says. “He’s a family guy, and my wife works for him, and it just makes sense all the way around.”

  James says, “That’s fine with me, mate. As long as Carli is on board, we’re good.”

  On a Saturday night in the spring, we all have dinner at Rich’s house, a ceremonial closing of our working relationship.

  After a little time passes, I am training with James, getting ready for the next camp, an important proving ground for me with World Cup qualifying beginning in the latter part of the year. I can’t say I know exactly what the trigger is, but I’ve gradually begun to have some second thoughts about working with Rich. What if some problem or issue comes up? Could that jeopardize my mom’s job? Wouldn’t it be awkward for everybody? Couldn’t it also wind up hurting me that he is not a sports agent and doesn’t know the legal landscape in that area? I’ve had these endorsement opportunities for some time, and still no agreement has been reached.

  I am also starting to question my parents’ involvement—actually, overinvolvement. I’ll always love them for all their sacrifices of time and money to help me, but now I am twenty-four years old, and more and more their in
put seems to put a strain on our relationship. When I come back from a camp, I am often grilled with questions. How did you play? How was your body language? Did you connect with the other players? These camps are exhausting and mentally grinding all by themselves. Having to give a full debriefing isn’t something I have much patience for.

  “I really don’t want to talk about it,” I say. “I just have to keep working hard.”

  This answer always sets my parents off.

  The issue that my parents harp on above all others is making sure I play the political game, being nice and forging alliances with influential veteran players. I want to make the team because of my skills and not because of who I am friends with.

  “I don’t want to be a suck-up,” I say.

  “That’s not what I’m suggesting. I just want you to be smart and give yourself your best chance to succeed,” my father says.

  I have never been somebody to go with the crowd. My parents appreciated that quality in high school when lots of other kids were partying and messing around with alcohol and drugs and I was getting sleep so I could be ready for my next training session. It’s not about being antisocial or rude. It’s about putting in the effort on the field and getting where I want to go. If that means missing out on parties or social events, hey, I’m going to do whatever it takes. My mother would caution me at times about being too much of a loner and not going out with my teammates.

  “Mom, going out partying is not what’s going to get me on the national team. Staying back and resting and being ready to kick ass the next day and showing the coach I’m emptying the tank—that’s what is going to get me on the national team.”

  Briana Scurry, the great goalkeeper who helped the U.S. capture the 1999 World Cup, is my roommate on one of our road trips. I ask her if she talks to her family about her soccer career, and if they are involved at all in the business side of it.

  “I never talk to them about any of it,” she says. “I love my family, but they don’t understand. I never want to mix family and business.”