When Nobody Was Watching

by Carli Lloyd

  If you are someone who has come up outside the developmental infrastructure, on the other hand, you are in for a long, hard climb. You are going to constantly have to prove yourself. Tiffeny Milbrett and Shannon MacMillan, two former standout forwards for the national team, can tell you about that.

  So can I.

  It’s a completely different path if you are a player such as Aly Wagner.

  Aly, for a long time, has been the up-and-coming star of U.S. Soccer, everybody’s favorite attacking midfielder. She was in a national camp, rooming with Mia Hamm, before she even got out of high school, and she earned her first cap at eighteen. She was the Gatorade High School Player of the Year and led Jerry Smith’s Santa Clara team to the NCAA title in 2001, scoring seventeen goals and picking up eighteen assists and winning Soccer America’s Female Player of the Year honors.

  A highly technical and creative player, Aly isn’t necessarily the greatest pure athlete, but she can pass with anybody and is one of the top playmakers of her time. Sometimes Aly and I play together, but mostly she is the player I know I have to try to beat out if I want to get into the lineup. I’m not saying at all that Aly hasn’t earned her spot; she’s a gifted player (and will go on to have a fine ten-year run with the team). All I’m saying is that we are not always viewed through the same lens. If Aly loses the ball or doesn’t execute a pass well, it’s an aberration and is typically overlooked. If I commit the same mistake, it’s a big fat strike against me and usually results in me getting pulled out of the game. The burden of proof is on me if I want to change the pecking order. For a long time, I resent that. I feel slighted and unappreciated.

  With James’s help, I start to use it as motivation.

  You don’t think I am good enough? You don’t think I’m the player who should be your starter at attacking mid? I will show you.

  It is not the first time that an industrial-sized chip on my shoulder works to my advantage.

  Whatever politics and preconceptions may be in play around the team, I decide that I don’t want to have any part in such nonsense. I have no hidden agendas. I want to play my best, and I want to win. It’s that simple. Marci is the same way. There isn’t any duplicity or drama about her. She is a soccer player, a darn good one.

  “Greg brought me in because he needed a few more ball-winners,” Marci says. “I knew that. I wasn’t one of the main players on the team. I just wanted to help us win a World Cup.”

  I wish Marci could be my teammate forever, but I know that won’t be the case. Indeed, not long after the World Cup, she departs the national team to take a position as the coach of Northern Illinois University.

  My other new friend is Michele Gould, our physical therapist on the trip to China. On the second practice of the trip, I block a blast of a shot by teammate Lori Chalupny, the force of it jerking my foot outward and resulting in the worst sprained ankle I’ve ever had. Michele has me in ice buckets four or five times a day. When my foot isn’t in the bucket, Michele puts it in a compression wrap or is massaging it to stimulate blood flow and healing. Michele is a savior. If she weren’t with us, I don’t think I would have even gotten on the field.

  It’s not a serious injury by any means, but the experience is a timely reminder of the importance of taking care of your body. The strength and vitality of your body are where it all starts. You need to listen to it and let it heal when it needs to heal. The injury is also a reminder of how invisible you become when you are not playing. Watching practice, I feel as useful as a deflated ball. The week that I am out, Greg pays no attention to me, and why would he? I am not playing. I am not out there training and helping the team get better.

  When I am finally back on the field, I come off after a training session.

  “How’s your ankle?” Greg asks.

  “It feels good. I’m ready to go,” I say.

  “Well, you don’t look good,” he says.

  His comment really ticks me off, and I walk away. I’ve worked my tail off to get back and all he can tell me is I don’t look good? I know I am doing myself no favors with this reaction. I am still immature, headstrong. My default response to a coach who is riding me this hard is to pull away and shut him out. Being coachable is one of the things I am still trying to learn.

  I come off the bench in the first game, a scoreless tie against Germany, and I don’t play well. I lose the ball a few times and try to force things too much. In our second game, against England, Marci gets banged up, and I come on for her and play much better, but then Greg and I have words after he yells something on the field and thinks I am disregarding him. Afterwards, Greg and I have a clear-the-air session. Bret Hall, Greg’s top assistant, is there in case we need a mediator.

  Greg tells me I am not coachable at times, and he needs to know I will hear him out and abide by his wishes.

  I tell him that I feel that I can’t do anything right and I am trying so hard to please him that it’s taking away the fun of playing for me.

  The conversation doesn’t airbrush away the problems, but at least we’ve had a civil and honest dialogue and know how we both feel. After we return to the States, we have a residency camp in February, and Greg has individual meetings with us and asks us about our goals. I tell him about wanting to master free kicks, to be more and more of an offensive force, and to do everything I can to continue to improve as a player.

  “My long-term goal is to be World Player of the Year,” I say.

  Greg chuckles, trying to stifle an all-out laugh when he hears this coming from the mouth of a twenty-four-year-old who hasn’t even established herself in the starting lineup yet. I know it must sound incredibly audacious and arrogant, but I don’t care. It’s the truth. This is what James and I have talked about from the beginning.

  It is what I’ve been visualizing almost from the first day on Ark Road.

  “You must be able to see it happening in your mind before it can happen on the field,” James said to me then, as he’s done many times since.

  The mind is like a brush-cutter in the woods, a bulldozer for your dreams, he says. It clears away the bramble and thicket so you have a path to follow. The mind sets out the path, and then the training enables you to follow it. “With a strong mind, you can become whatever you want to become,” James says.

  This is our plan, and I am sticking with it.

  We head to Portugal for the Algarve Cup, where we open up against China. It’s a 1–1 game late in the first half when Abby Wambach crosses the ball from the right, through the penalty area toward the left corner, where Stephanie Lopez runs the ball down. Stephanie nutmegs her defender and then toe-pokes a pass back to me. I juke a defender and crack a right-footed shot from twenty-five yards out into the upper left corner.

  It turns out to be the game-winner and sets me on my way as we win all four games and I score in every one of them. I am named tournament MVP and Top Goal Scorer, and it is easily the high point of my young career. My confidence is soaring as we ramp up our preparation for the World Cup.

  Maybe this will be a turning point in my career and in my relationship with Greg, I think.

  Usually the more time you spend around a person, the better you get to know them. With Greg, the more time I spend around him, the more confused I become. I never know if he’s going to tell me that I am on my way to being a world-class midfielder or that I am an embarrassment who is lucky to have a spot on his roster.

  None of us have any luck reading him. When we come out for practice, our running joke is, “Who is he going to crush today?” People on the team who knew him before he took over as head coach say that they’ve never seen him behave this way, that there has been a total personality transplant. The funny thing is, when Greg was April Heinrichs’s assistant, we all loved him. He was the guy you wanted to run into in the hotel lobby, have a cup of coffee with. He was our pal. He moved over one seat, and everything changed.

  After a closed-door scrimmage against Japan in San Jose, California, in late July
, Greg is profoundly unhappy and wants us to know it. We are all sitting on the ground in front of him. He is standing over us with his barrel chest and massive calves, a stout, well-scrubbed fireplug who always looks as if he’s just gotten out of the shower. Greg played professionally for the North American Soccer League and Major Indoor Soccer League; they are not top pro leagues by any means, but Greg was a rugged defender who grinded out a living. You have to respect that. Greg Ryan is nobody to mess with.

  “All of you who were part of the 2004 Olympic team, sit over here,” he says, pointing to a line on the field. “You guys—Chupa [Lori Chalupny], Leslie [Osborne], and Marci—you go over there,” pointing in a different direction.

  You can feel an explosion coming.

  “These are people who will fight for each other and for me and do whatever it takes to win,” he says, referring to the two groups. Then he looks at the rest of us—Hope Solo, Tina Ellertson, Nicole Barnhart, Natasha Kai, and me—and screams, “You are people who don’t have heart and don’t work hard and don’t care about the team.” (Greg exempts newcomers Stephanie Lopez and Marian Dalmy from his classifications.)

  I am so stunned I don’t know what to say. I have been criticized before, but this is at a different level. No heart? Don’t care about the team? I don’t want to talk about this with the other players singled out. I don’t want to talk to anybody. When Greg is finally done, I grab my stuff and head straight for the bus. I am far from a perfect player. I know I have so much to learn. But for him to be in our faces, telling us that we have no heart and don’t work hard and don’t put the team first, well, that is not true and not fair. Yes, he’s the coach and I’m the player, but that is still completely clueless. If it is a motivational ploy, it’s even worse.

  It doesn’t motivate me. It depresses me. My coach has just dismembered me.

  Greg Ryan is under a great deal of pressure, I understand that. His team is a heavy favorite to bring home the first World Cup since 1999, and if he doesn’t deliver, it’s on him. I know he wants to keep us humble and hungry. I just don’t think constantly demeaning people is the way to achieve that.

  Greg stays on my case for the rest of the summer, his criticisms focusing on my defense and my tendency to take risks and take people on. My head keeps spinning. James sends a series of texts and emails to keep me grounded, and Marci reinforces them. When she sees how upset I am one day, she texts me and says, “You need to keep believing in what you can do. Everyone thinks you are so damn good. . . . Something great is coming your way.”

  The words help, and my new, self-designed Nike cleats give me a little emotional pickup too. I have three different designs, the first female Nike athlete to design her own cleats for the World Cup. There’s a red-white-and-blue pair for the first round; for the quarters and semis, I have a yellow pair with the Five Pillars of Universal Soccer Academy in the back. For the finals, I have an orange pair, which stands for all my supporters and loved ones. James’s initials, JG, are on the tongue, and 143 is on the side for Brian, our private code for I love you.

  I don’t know whether my shoes and I are going to start, but I feel fit and strong and ready to go. My parents and Brian have made the trip, and even with the problems my parents and I have been having, I appreciate that they will be in China to support me. Brian is so loyal and kind; it’s comforting to know he will be there for me. I am rooming with Marci again, so I’m happy about that. One of the first things I do when we settle into our room is watch a film clip given to me by Phil Wheddon, our goalkeeping coach. It’s a personal highlight reel—Phil gives one to everybody—and it helps a lot with my mental imaging. I see myself ripping shots from distance, delivering crunching tackles, and threading through balls. Phil does a masterful job with the clip. I watch it often.

  Greg has been the coach for eighteen months now, in which time we have not lost a single game in regulation time. We’ve won forty-five games and lost one, and yet to me we still don’t seem settled and confident as a team, even with the leadership of Kristine Lilly, the goal-scoring prowess of Abby Wambach, and the emergence of Hope Solo as an elite goalkeeper. Ten days before the World Cup is to kick off against Korea in Chengdu, Greg gathers us together and announces that we’re changing formation from a 4-2-4 to a 4-3-3, adding an extra player in midfield. He sounds excited about it and tells me it means I am back in the starting lineup. I am wondering if he is messing with me or if he really means it.

  It turns out he means it.

  The opener against Korea, the youngest team in the field, doesn’t go the way we hope. It’s a rainy, sloppy field, and the Koreans have the better of the play through most of the first half. I win a ball in midfield and get it to Lilly, who steers a pass on the right to Abby, who opens the scoring in the fiftieth minute, but then Abby knocks heads defending our goal a few minutes later, suffering a nasty gash that requires eleven stitches to close. Greg doesn’t want to lose Abby so he opts not to sub, and Korea strikes twice when she’s out, the first on a shot beyond the 18 that slips through Hope’s hands. Heather O’Reilly ties the score with a surgical, one-touch strike off a loose ball into the upper right corner in the sixty-ninth minute, sparing us an unthinkable defeat.

  I’m not happy with the tie, but I am happy with my performance. I defend and win fifty-fifty balls and help orchestrate things offensively.

  “You grew a lot as a player in this game. That was an excellent first World Cup game,” Greg says.

  We win our second game 2–0 over Sweden on two more goals by Abby, but the truth is that we still don’t look our best. We’re playing ugly, direct football, Greg’s preferred style—bypassing the midfield and launching long balls to Abby or Lilly and hoping for the best. Our defense is tight, and Hope throws a shutout, and though I get subbed out for Shannon Boxx, I believe I’ve turned in another creditable effort.

  We leave Chengdu for Shanghai, where we grind out a 1–0 victory over Nigeria to advance out of our group. I start a third straight game, this time getting subbed for Leslie Osborne, and Greg seems to sense my frustration with the way we are not connecting passes or playing possession soccer.

  “If you spend all your time trying to look pretty, you are going to end up with big problems the other way,” Ryan tells the press after the game. He approaches me later and asks if we can talk.

  “I just want to check in and see how you are doing,” he says. “I know I’ve been tough on you the last two and a half years, and I am so proud of how you’ve come along. You are going to be the future of this team.”

  It is one second later, maybe two, that he informs me that I will not be starting in our first elimination game against England.

  This makes it official: I will never understand this man.

  As we get ready for the game Greg wants to build morale and quiet any rumblings of discontent about how we are playing.

  “We’re outplaying every team in this tournament and haven’t given up a goal in 11 v. 11 play. Not one,” he says, reminding us that Korea’s two goals came with Abby off the field for ten minutes.

  Then we players have our own meeting, and it becomes very clear how deep the frustration goes. Abby says we are focusing too much on defense and need to be more aggressive offensively, no matter what Greg says.

  “I feel like I can’t play-make or build up the attack because we’re just sending long balls to the forward line,” I say.

  Just about everybody speaks up, and the unrest is as thick as the Chinese smog, even if you wouldn’t know it watching the England game, which we blew open with three goals in twelve minutes early in the second half. I only play ten minutes and can’t say that I understand why, but the mayhem is just beginning.

  We’ve advanced to the semifinals against Brazil, a rising power in the sport with a collection of dazzlingly skilled players who play as if they were jazz musicians in cleats, riffing and improvising as they go. Brazil is led by Marta, a twenty-year-old superstar, and her teammates Cristiane and Formiga. (When yo
u are a big soccer star in Brazil, no second name is necessary.) The Brazilians have scored thirteen goals in four games. We are the top-ranked team in the world, and even though there are many new faces on this team, we are considered a strong favorite to win it all.

  It is the most anticipated match of the 2007 World Cup and becomes even more so when Greg Ryan does one more shocking about-face, replacing Hope with Briana Scurry in goal. After a shaky start against Korea, Hope had recorded three straight shutouts. She has been our starter for a couple of years. Bri is a legendary keeper, a former World Cup champion, and an Olympic champion, but it is unprecedented to make such a switch at this point in a World Cup. Greg’s explanation is that Bri is a superior shot-stopper and has a brilliant track record against Brazil. Hope is fuming, crushed, and it gets even worse when she apparently learns that Lilly and Abby had lobbied for the goalkeeping change.

  I don’t get it, because I think Hope is the best keeper in the world, and I still don’t get how the drama keeps seeping to the surface like so much toxic waste with this team. The biggest match of the tournament begins with an own-goal in the twentieth minute, when Leslie Osborne tries to clear a corner kick with a low header and winds up putting it past Bri into our goal. Bri hasn’t played a game in three months and looks rusty, tentative. How could she not? Then Marta wins a ball in our end and attacks, cutting into the box and firing a low, left-footed shot toward the right post. Bri gets a hand on it, but her reaction isn’t quite quick enough. It’s 2–0, Brazil, and when Shannon Boxx gets sent off for a second yellow card—a completely phantom call on a play when she is the one who was fouled—we are looking at playing the second forty-five minutes down a man.