When Nobody Was Watching

by Carli Lloyd

  “We’ll reach out and get together again soon,” my mother says.

  “That sounds good,” I say, and then I hug each of them and say good-bye.

  When they leave, I have a feeling I haven’t had for a long time in regard to my family. I have hope.

  Things may be taking a turn toward the stable with the family, but not so on the team. Pia Sundhage is out as coach. It is announced on September 1, 2012, in Rochester, New York, Abby’s hometown, hours before we are set to begin our victory tour against Costa Rica. It is twenty-three days after Pia led us to our second Olympic gold medal. Pia, true to form, used the moment to break into song before the crowd, this time Dylan’s “If Not for You.”

  With a five-year record of 89-6-10, Pia is returning home to coach the national team of her native Sweden and says she is “so happy.” She praises all of us and thanks us and her assistants for making her look good.

  “Before I took this job, I always admired the spirit and character of the U.S. team, but to experience that firsthand on the training field and from the bench as their coach was truly special and something I will treasure for the rest of my life,” Pia said.

  U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati is no less gushing about Pia and says it was an awfully difficult decision whether to let her go. Everybody wants to make it sound as if Pia was the one who engineered the change, but I’m not so sure, since that’s usually not how things work around the U.S. Women’s National Team. April Heinrichs was forced out by a core of veterans who basically ran the team, and Greg Ryan was too, though he was going to be a goner anyway the moment the terrible 2007 World Cup ended.

  Pia met with Sunil after London, and from what I understand, they talked about her future before tabling the discussion and deciding to meet again in a few weeks. In the interim, a so-called leadership group of players had a conference call and began to quietly push Sunil to get rid of Pia. When word leaks out on the team about what is going on, I am upset, and so are lots of other people who aren’t part of the “leadership group.” I don’t know how everything goes down. I just know that Sunil and Dan Flynn, CEO of U.S. Soccer, fly in and meet with us before the Costa Rica game and talk to us about the situation, and soon the announcement is made that Pia is leaving and is “so happy” about her dream opportunity back in Sweden.

  Pia and I have had our differences here and there—I was furious when I was benched before the Olympics—but I still have great respect for her as a coach. She is positive and clever and humble, and she made us a much better and more creative team. People forget that she took over a team in complete chaos after the 2007 World Cup, that she gradually brought Hope back into the fold and stabilized things. Two Olympic golds and a runner-up finish on PKs in the World Cup final is a pretty good body of work in five years.

  I am going to miss Pia Sundhage.

  The best year I’ve ever had in soccer ends in the saddest of ways when I learn that my old Medford Strikers coach, Joe Dadura, has passed away suddenly at the age of fifty-six. I am about to leave for our final games of 2012, a three-game series against China in Detroit, Houston, and Boca Raton, but push back my flight so I can attend Mr. D’s funeral. The last decade of Mr. D’s life was not easy, in any way, ever since he was hit in the predawn hours by a drunk driver not far from a Taco Bell in West New York, New Jersey. Mr. D was making a work delivery. The driver supposedly had been out drinking and fell asleep at the wheel. Mr. D was standing beside his truck and had no chance. He suffered horrible injuries and battled them to the end, which came nine years later.

  The funeral is in a tall brick building with white pillars in Washington Township, New Jersey. Most of our old Medford Strikers team is there. It is not a reunion we wanted to have. There are touching tributes and photo montages of Mr. D, many of the images showing him in his red-and-black Strikers jacket. He was almost never without it. We hug Kacy, our teammate and Mr. D’s daughter, and Mrs. D, and we share memories of all the practices and tournaments we had with Mr. D, who started the team and made it into a powerhouse. It is still the closest team I’ve ever been on, and still the purest fun I have ever had playing soccer. Mr. D made it that way. We felt so much joy playing together. We loved each other, and we loved our coach.

  I sign the memorial book and write, “I will forever cherish all the wonderful moments we had together. Thank you, Mr. D, for everything you did for me.”

  After saying good-bye to my former teammates, I get on a plane to Detroit. A few days later, we are playing China at Ford Field, and in the fiftieth minute I knife through a crowd in the box and pound a low, left-footed drive inside the near post. It breaks a scoreless tie, and I run upfield thinking of one thing:

  That was for you, Mr. D.

  Our new coach—number three during my time with the team—takes over on January 1, 2013. He is a fifty-eight-year-old Scotsman named Tom Sermanni. He coached Australia to three World Cup quarterfinal finishes and helped make the Australians a much more skillful and technically proficient team. Tom also coached in our defunct pro league, the WUSA, and is known for a laid-back temperament and for being a players’ coach, a man who lets players play and treats people like grown-ups.

  Tom has strong credentials and seems to be a very nice man, and if you are going to make a coaching change, this is the time to do it—with no truly major tournaments coming up until the 2015 World Cup in Canada.

  We begin our 2013 with a training camp in Jacksonville, Florida, in early February. Tom is trying to get a feel for all of us as players and experimenting with different combinations—a smart thing to do. He isn’t saying much at the start, just mostly watching. I take nothing for granted. I approach every training session as if I am fighting for a spot on the team, going for my first cap. I don’t want anything to determine my fate other than my play.

  A friend says to me, “Relax, Carli. Do you think you really have to prove yourself at this point?”

  Relaxing isn’t in my DNA on the field, especially when there’s a new coach on board.

  “I don’t know what Tom thinks, or what he’s been told,” I reply. “I’m leaving nothing to chance. I’m going to empty the tank every day.”

  We head to Portugal for our annual Algarve Cup appearance, and we open against Iceland. About fifteen minutes in, I am shoved from behind and land hard on my left shoulder. I hear a crack. I get right up and keep playing, but I know something is wrong. My arm feels weak and painful. I can’t push off with it at all and have to keep it right at my side when I run. I finish the half and get it looked at by a doctor and trainer.

  The doctor doesn’t think it is serious and says my strength in it is actually quite good.

  “You should be able to play with it,” he says.

  I am heartened by the diagnosis, but I have my doubts. The crack I heard wasn’t from stepping on an acorn. I start the second half and go for almost twenty minutes until the pain gets to be too much. Tom subs me out and brings in Christen Press.

  We beat Iceland, 3–0, but it’s hard for me to enjoy it. The pain is much worse the next day, after the adrenaline wears off. I ice it and get treatment and am so ticked off this happened, it’s making me crazy. I go for a run on a treadmill because I don’t want to lose fitness. I do sprints at practice with my left arm dangling like a loose thread, but there’s no getting around the facts: I am going to be a spectator for the rest of the Algarve Cup.

  The pain persists, keeping me up at night, so I lie in bed and have a movie marathon until dawn. I am hurt, and I am worried. I’ve been rehabbing and doing everything necessary to feel better, get my strength back, and get back on the field. I’m planning to play in the final, but the doctor wants me to get an MRI and X-ray to make sure nothing serious happened. We get the results immediately, and it isn’t good news. The images show a break in the tuberosity bone of my shoulder. Obviously, I’m told I cannot play.

  We play Germany in the final and win 2–0, but I am out for six to eight weeks.

  I miss a team t
rip to Germany and the Netherlands as I rehab my shoulder. The only good thing about the forced break is that Brian and I have our longest uninterrupted time together in ages.

  The shoulder responds well to rest and rehab, and the eight-week X-ray looks good, so I am cleared to play and head off to Buffalo to join the Western New York Flash, my new team in yet another incarnation of women’s pro soccer. This one is called the National Women’s Soccer League, and all I can do is hope it gets some traction and outlasts its predecessors, the WUSA and the WPS. Abby, the local kid made good, is the star of the Flash, and it’s great to be together. We connect well and win the first two games I play before Abby and I head off to a weeklong national team camp, play solidly in a 3–0 victory over Canada, and then head back to Buffalo, where I score my first goal in front of the home crowd. It’s a wacky juggling act, bouncing back and forth between the Flash and the national team, but we know that the league needs the national team players if it’s going to have a chance at survival.

  You do what you have to do.

  One of my other concerns is how I should approach Dawn Scott, our fitness trainer. I totally respect Dawn. She is so committed to her work and has made a huge difference in our team’s overall fitness, but she is worried that I am doing too much extra stuff on the side.

  “I love your work ethic, but you have to give your body a chance to recharge,” she says.

  I know rest is important. I also know my body, and know that I need the extra fitness work to be at a world-class level. Heather O’Reilly and Kelley O’Hara have lungs the size of hot-air balloons and can run all day. I can’t. The extra work is how I play catch-up.

  Dawn is also encouraging me to lift weights, to get stronger and more explosive. Again, I know she is just doing her job, but the fact is that weights may work for other people, but I’ve found that they just don’t give me the results I am looking for.

  “Weights make me slow,” I tell Dawn. “They make me less agile. I do plenty of strength work using body weight, whether it’s push-ups, ropes, TRX, bands, or whatever. I don’t mean to be difficult or high-maintenance. I am totally committed to getting stronger, and I’ve learned this is the best way to do that for me.”

  Dawn doesn’t just hear me; she helps me find body-weight exercises that will achieve the desired result. It’s all good. I follow up with Tom and make sure he understands that I am doing everything I need to do to be fit and strong—I am just doing it the way that works best for me.

  “You’ve proven you know what it takes,” Tom says. “However you want to do your work is fine.”

  Our next friendly is back home in Jersey at Red Bull Arena, against South Korea. We’re undefeated in ten games under Tom, and though there is some grumbling about his ever-changing lineups, you can’t argue with the results. In the tenth minute, Abby gets nice service in the box from Lauren Cheney, settles the ball with her left foot, pivots, and drills a ball in the near side for a 1–0 lead. Eight minutes later, I carry the ball in midfield and flick a pass out wide to the left, and soon Cheney is on the ball again, lofting a cross in front, where Abby delivers—yes—a diving header to make it 2–0. The goal ties Abby with Mia Hamm atop the all-time U.S. scoring list with 158 goals, and the tie does not last for long, because before the game is a half-hour old Abby knocks in another header off a Pinoe corner kick. Now she is alone at number 159, the greatest soccer scorer in American history. I rush toward Abby to hug her, and so does the whole team, our bench players sprinting out onto the field in their green pinnies, the crowd standing and cheering. It is a beautiful moment. Abby and I haven’t always been on the same side of things, but I’ve always admired her love of the game and the indomitable strength and will she brings to the striker position. She loves to score goals and she loves to win, and to her everlasting credit, she loves to share the glory, crediting her teammates for making her look good. Abby has always been that way, and it says a whole lot about her as a person. I am happy for Abby that she breaks the record, and happy again when she scores number four—number 160 overall—in stoppage time of the first half.

  As if four goals in a half and setting a cherished record are not enough, Abby also accepts the captain’s armband after Christie Rampone is subbed out. When it is Abby’s time to come off, Tom and Paul Rogers, his assistant coach, apparently want Abby to hand it to me and are emphatically gesturing to get Abby’s attention on the sideline. Though it may seem to be a minor matter in the middle of a blowout victory, it isn’t minor to Hope Solo, our star goalkeeper, who is not on the roster as she recovers from surgery.

  “It is awesome to see you get the respect you finally deserve,” Hope says in a text. “People tried so hard not to like you for whatever reason, jealousy or whatever, but you demanded respect by your commitment to being the best and by your play. And we finally have a staff that has ultimate respect for you and for once you don’t have to prove anything to anybody.

  “You will always be my captain.”

  It is one of the most touching messages I’ve ever gotten.

  During another trip back to Jersey to face Sky Blue, I want to keep the positive momentum going with my parents. They tell me they are planning on coming to the game.

  “Great, I will leave you tickets,” I say. I haven’t seen them in four months because of my commitments with the national team and the Flash. My cousins and aunts and uncles and other friends are coming to the game as well. I am just hoping everybody can get along.

  “It’ll be good to see you,” I tell my parents.

  My parents bring along my aunt Lorraine, my father’s sister. We have a strong game, and I score a goal and am looking forward to visiting with everyone afterwards, especially my parents. They haven’t been to one of my games in a long time. They are the people who were there when I was with the Delran Dynamite. My father was the one who always set up his folding chair by the corner flag, to get the best possible view of my attacking game.

  When I get to the meeting area, I don’t see my parents anywhere. I am puzzled. I hope everything is okay. I ask Brian and my cousin Jaime if they’ve seen my parents.

  “No, I think they left,” Jaime says.

  “They left? Why would they leave?” I say. I think, There’s no way they would just leave without saying anything to me.

  But I am wrong. They didn’t wait. For whatever reason, they left without even saying hello. As Brian and I drive away from the field, my mom sends me a text message: “hi carli, it was great to see you play in person. sorry we didn’t see you after the game, we knew you had a lot of people there and didn’t want to keep you from seeing them. Love mom and dad.” I haven’t seen my parents since.

  The Flash gets better and better as the season goes on. In a game against Washington, Abby plays great balls to me all night, and it is my turn to fill the net. I score three times in a 4–0 victory. I earn NWSL Player of the Week honors, and we go six weeks without losing a game, securing a playoff spot against Sky Blue, a team we’ve beaten twice by a 3–0 margin. Jim Gabarra is the Sky Blue coach, and I heard earlier in the year that he has talked crap about me to the Flash owner, telling him I’m going to be a big headache for him—if not now, then soon.

  Some people are good at letting things like this go, but I am not one of them. I’m not necessarily proud of that, but it’s the way I am. If you diss me or dismiss me, I am going to remember. We beat Sky Blue, 2–0, in the semifinals. I score both goals, the second after a thirty-five-yard run that ends with a rocket into the upper ninety.

  I shake Jim Gabarra’s hand after the game and say, “Next time maybe you will think twice about saying stuff about me.”

  He says he doesn’t know what I am talking about.

  “You know exactly what I am talking about,” I say, and then I walk away.

  We wind up losing the final to Portland, which gets a sick goal from Tobin Heath from about thirty-six yards out. It’s not the ending I am looking for, but it’s been a good year on the whole, and I retu
rn to the national team in strong form. We finish the year undefeated, with a 4–1 victory over Brazil. I have a part in three of the four goals. We seem to be flourishing as we head into 2014 and World Cup qualifying, a side that seems ready to reach a new level and cement its status as the best women’s soccer team in the world.

  It’s too bad it doesn’t work out that way.

  14

  Coaching Carousel Part II

  I FEEL STRONGER AND FITTER than I ever have in our first camp of 2014 in Los Angeles. My shooting is off in training and that is annoying, and I am thinking a bit too much on the field, but otherwise I am ready to crush it this year.

  The mood teamwide is not as good. We take a three-week swing through Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, and Atlanta, and it doesn’t start well in a friendly against Canada. I am sitting it out after getting two yellow cards in our last game against Brazil, so we have some new pieces in new places, and the result isn’t up to our usual standard. The first twenty minutes are okay, and we do wind up winning on a goal by Sydney Leroux, but our possession and creativity are lacking. We do a lot of dumping the ball into the box and hoping for the best.

  It is not what Tom Sermanni is looking for from the top-ranked team in the world.

  We beat up on Russia in two games in February—combined score 15–0—and head off to Portugal for Algarve, a tournament we’ve completely dominated, winning three of the last four titles and eight of the last eleven, but we are a side in flux. Abby hasn’t been at the top of her game. Tom meets with her and tells her she is behind Press and Leroux right now.