When Nobody Was Watching

by Carli Lloyd

  Christmas is my favorite holiday. It has been since I was a little girl. We would always go get the tree together; sometimes we’d even chop one down. We’d decorate it with lights and ornaments, including my favorite—a little globe with a baby inside it. I don’t know why I liked that one so much. Maybe the innocence, the purity of it. Christmas felt magical every single year.

  On the night before Christmas, we’d all be together as a family—cousins and aunts and uncles, usually at Aunt Patti’s house—and then we’d go back to our house and open our presents on Christmas morning. My parents would separate the gifts into piles, one each for Stephen, Ashley, and me. It felt different from every other day of the year. I loved that it was cold out and that everybody was happy. That was the best part. This is the seventh Christmas I’ve spent apart from my family. It’s always a little sad for me to think about that. One day I hope we can celebrate Christmas together again.

  We spend that Christmas Day 2014 at Brian’s sister Lisa’s house, but before we go I head out to Laurel Acres and train, running sprints up the hill. Nobody else is in the park. It’s a great, energizing workout. I always train on Christmas Day. For me, it’s an affirmation of how committed I am, how I am ready to go even on the most special holiday of the year.

  I train right through the New Year. Our camp starts on January 5, and when departure day nears, it’s never a fun time. Brian and I have gotten very good at saying good-bye because we have had way too much practice, but the closer we get the more difficult the good-byes get.

  “You know, one of these days we will actually be together and not have to do this all the time,” I tell him.

  Three days before I am to head out to Los Angeles, Brian suggests that we have a belated anniversary celebration of the day we started going together (December 20, 2000). He wants to drive to a charming little enclave in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, called Peddler’s Village, a cluster of antique stone buildings and nice shops, done up beautifully with lights and decorations for the holidays. We’re going to stroll through the cobblestone streets and do some exploring and then have a quiet dinner at a place called the Yardley Inn.

  It’s a Friday night, and as we walk through Peddler’s Village, Brian is unusually quiet. He seems preoccupied. I hope nothing is wrong. I don’t know what’s going on. I decide to let it go.

  “You want to have a cup of hot chocolate?” he says.

  “Sure,” I reply.

  We stop at a café, and Brian looks around for an empty table. There are none—and that seems to annoy him. We stroll with our hot chocolate, and then Brian suggests we walk over to a gazebo, which is normally a private sort of place but at the moment is full of gingerbread houses and people looking at the gingerbread houses. We keep walking. I am on Brian’s right, before he suddenly circles around to the other side of me. Now I am on his left.

  Brian is definitely not himself, I think.

  Through the quaint streets of Peddler’s Village we go, until we come upon a tunnel decorated with little white Christmas lights that are twinkling all around us. Brian stops in the tunnel.

  “Let’s take a picture,” he says, holding out his phone at arm’s length.

  Brian never wants to take selfies. I wish I knew what was up with him.

  And then, a moment or two after he puts his phone away, Brian Hollins falls to one knee, right in the middle of the tunnel. He reaches for my hand.

  “I’ve been waiting to do this for a very long time,” he says. “Carli, you are the love of my life, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

  I start to tear up before I can even say yes. Brian waits for a herd of people in the tunnel to go by and then reaches into his inside coat pocket and pulls out a small box. He hands it to me, and I open it up. It is the most beautiful engagement ring I have ever seen. I slip it on, and it fits perfectly. Now Brian and I, future husband and wife, are wrapped in each other’s arms under the twinkling white lights, and it doesn’t matter who else is in the tunnel.

  It is the happiest moment of my life.

  A little later, in the Yardley Inn, we are both so excited we can barely eat. Brian explains all of the little oddities I kept noticing, and now they all make sense. He didn’t want me walking near the pocket where he had the ring for fear that I might discover it—hence the end-around. He was thinking of proposing over hot chocolate, but it was too crowded and there was no private place to sit. His number-one choice was the gazebo, but it was overrun by gingerbread activity and a long line of people. The last resort was the sweet, white-lit tunnel. It is January 2, 2015, and it is the best place to get engaged that I can imagine. I can’t wait to share the news with the people we love.

  The more I am around Jill, the more I like her. She believes that if we are going to be the best, we have to play the best. There’s no sense in going into the World Cup with a series of 5–0 victories behind us that make everybody feel good but are as useful as a flat tire for our preparation. So after a hard four-week camp in Los Angeles in January, she wants to test us in a big way, to have iron sharpen iron.

  “One of the first things I did when I got hired was to tell people, ‘We haven’t won the World Cup in sixteen years,’ ” Jill says. “ ‘If we want to change that, we can’t continue what we’ve been doing.’ That’s not a knock on the previous coaches. Not at all. It’s just finding ways to create challenges and build a stronger team. I told them I wanted to play the top five teams in the world if we can—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We’ve never done that before, five or six months out from a major world event. We’ve never played a series of games against the best. Maybe we’ve played one or two, but that is not enough. I wanted us to go into the World Cup hungry and humbled and understanding that to win it’s going to require us paying close attention to all the details—game management, set pieces, things like that.”

  So the start of our World Cup year begins with games against France and England before we head to Portugal for the Algarve Cup. The only top team Jill can’t get scheduled is Germany, just because our available dates don’t match up.

  Jill is determined to keep stretching our comfort zone as if it were Spandex, and she is no less determined to tighten us and organize us defensively. Pia and Tom both were more inclined to give us room to figure things out and solve problems on our own. They encouraged us to possess the ball and build up through the midfield and create scoring chances that way. It’s not that Jill doesn’t want us to do that; she just wants to lay down a more disciplined, structured defensive foundation—a system in which we are defending as a unit and staying organized and building out from there.

  It is a sound plan, and it needs to be, because we are playing without Hope, who has been suspended by U.S. Soccer in the wake of an incident in which her husband, Jerramy Stevens, is arrested for driving a team van while under the influence. I don’t know the details, but I do know it’s not an easy spot for Ashlyn Harris, our backup, who will be in the net against the number-three team in the world.

  The game against France is every bit the test Jill wants it to be. We have multiple chances to score. I have a great one inside the box, but sky it over the crossbar. Abby gets stuffed on a penalty kick. We never break through, and the French score twice. The 2–0 defeat is the first time we have ever lost to them.

  The most disconcerting thing for me is where I am on the field. Jill starts me at left mid, telling me that she wants me to pinch in toward the middle, thinking that being in the wide position may help me get forward faster, which is what she wants. I understand her thinking, and I know she wants to give Lauren Holiday and Morgan Brian a look in the middle of our 4-4-2 alignment, but the truth is, I don’t think it works on the field. Holiday is in the middle for the first sixty minutes, and then Jill moves me there. There are immediate payoffs: I feel much more involved in the attack, and I am winning balls and starting counters. The middle is where I want to be. I believe it is where I need to be, for the good of the te
am.

  Jill sticks with the same alignment, with me out wide at left mid, in our next game against England, and though we score a 1–0 victory on a goal by Alex Morgan, I am frustrated by the way I play—and where I play. I miss a great chance to score on a volley, which is all the more maddening because I’d taken about 200 of them with James the week before. I talk to James, and I agree with his assessment that I am not mentally preparing myself to play—not spending enough time visualizing the game and how I want to play.

  “You will always play better when you’ve already visualized the game in your head,” says James, who also tells me not to get worked up about the position issue.

  “Embrace the change that Jill is making. Be a good soldier. Learn something from it. You are seeing the field from a different perspective. It will make you a stronger player when you are back in the middle.”

  For now, though, I am still on the left, pinched in, and fixed on erasing the memory of the Algarve debacle of a year earlier—the seventh-place finish that basically cost Tom Sermanni his job. It’s important that we make a statement this time around, start putting pieces together. We open up against Norway and fall behind by a goal on a header right before halftime. We apply more pressure in the second half, and ten minutes in I spin on a ball just outside the box and drive a left-footed shot inside the far post to tie the game. I convert a PK off a hand ball in the box six minutes later, and we make the lead hold up. Then we move on to beat Switzerland, 3–0, in a bruising and mostly artless game.

  Assured of a place in the final, Jill rests several starters (me included, for the first half) in a scoreless tie game with Iceland. To me, we are playing too cautiously, still parking the bus, and I honestly think it goes back to the losses to Brazil in December and France in February. We have taken on a distinctly defensive posture and are mostly looking to score on counterattacks. I understand that an organized, first-rate defense is vital, but I also believe we’re way too good just to absorb pressure and then bust out on the counter. I want to take it to the other team. I want to come at our opponents and see if they can stop us.

  We have a rematch against France in the Algarve final. Hope is back from her suspension, so that’s a huge lift. Julie Johnston scores on a well-aimed header on Holiday’s perfectly placed direct kick, and then Christen Press slices through the spine of the French defense to give us a two-goal lead. Hope stops a PK and is awesome, and we come off with a 2–0 victory, sweet Portuguese payback.

  Even though Jill and the staff are ecstatic with the win, I have a different take. It was a strong defensive game, no doubt, but we continue to sit back and play passively, as if we’re afraid that if we push numbers forward we’re going to leave ourselves vulnerable. We sustain almost no attack against France and have few good chances. I feel largely uninvolved and barely even touch the ball. Of course I am happy with the result, but the manner in which we achieve it is troubling, not because everything must revolve around me but because we’re honestly not playing at a high level. Sometimes scores can fool you; they can mask an underlying issue. When I get back to my room, I write in my journal:

  We have a long way to go to win the World Cup.

  After a twelve-day break, we return to camp in L.A., and one day we scrimmage with a boys’ team. I am not happy with how we play. I am out wide on the left, and Holiday and Brian are in the middle. I feel almost useless, like a fifth wheel. Jill walks up to me after the scrimmage. For maybe the first time in my life, I break down on the field. Even I am shocked at the depth of my emotions in that moment.

  “What’s wrong, Carli?” Jill asks.

  I can barely get any words out I am so frustrated. Jill looks at me and says, “Let’s meet later.” I nod and wipe the tears away and get it together. Later that night, about 9:00 PM, Jill texts me.

  “What are you doing?” she says.

  “I’m in my PJs, getting ready for bed,” I reply.

  “I’m in my PJs too. Why don’t you come up to my room for a few minutes and we’ll talk.”

  When I get to Jill’s room, her daughter, Lily, is asleep in the other bed. I start talking about this left-mid experiment and how I think it is not working for anybody. I am not alone in this opinion either. Abby, for one, is telling me constantly that the team needs me in the middle of the field. Others are saying the same thing. I’m not looking to be insubordinate but rather to openly voice an opinion about the direction of the team.

  “I respect you totally and will do whatever it takes and whatever you want, but that’s how I feel,” I tell Jill. And then, suddenly, I break down again, emotions sweeping over me in tidal waves, my voice shaky and cracking.

  “I’m so frustrated. I just want to help us win,” I say.

  “It’s okay, Carli. It’s okay,” Jill says. She listens to everything I have to say and tells me that she’s glad I am being honest with my emotions. She has a kind and comforting way about her.

  “I know you want what’s best for the team. You have always been team-oriented, from the first time I coached you,” Jill says. “Listen, we just wanted to try some things. It’s a process we have to go through, and sometimes there are struggles when people are in different roles. I’ve watched these games and spoken with the other coaches, and everybody seems to agree that we need you back in the middle. You did very well outside, but it’s not the same when we don’t have you attacking and distributing and tackling in the middle of the field.

  “We’re going to be better for having gone through this, and so will you, I think. But don’t you worry. You will be back in the eight.”

  Eight is the number soccer coaches use to refer to a traditional center midfielder. Eight is where I want to be. It is a great pajama talk. I go back to my room feeling much better about things.

  We travel to St. Louis to play New Zealand on April 4, one day before the Cardinals open their season in Busch Stadium. More than 35,000 people turn out, the biggest crowd for a stand-alone friendly we’ve ever had. I feel short on confidence as the game begins, weighted by pressure to prove to Jill I was right. The best antidote to that is to play simply, to get into the flow of things, to help with the buildup.

  That is exactly what I do.

  I am taking few touches, moving the ball around, getting people linked up. Just five minutes in I play a ball back, and it swings wide to the left, where Meghan Klingenberg is overlapping. I see space in front of me and make a run into the box, and Kling finds me perfectly. I carry the ball in and flick a centering pass as Amy Rodriguez and Christen Press crash the goal. The ball is deflected away, but it is a strong offensive thrust by us. I am heartened, no matter that we didn’t score. This is how I want us to play.

  Kling hits a blistering shot from outside the box to open the scoring, and we add three more late goals in a six-minute span for a 4–0 victory. It is the best game we’ve played in a while, and the most gratifying game I’ve played in a while. I take care of the ball well in the middle and tackle relentlessly, and our strong pushes up the middle all game open up the flanks for us.

  The World Cup is two months out, and it’s crucial to keep building toward a peak. We have three more friendlies left, and it’s time to do all the fine-tuning we can, to work on all the details that Jill says could well make the difference in Canada.

  More than that, it is a time to regain our defiance and swagger, our drive to do whatever it takes to win a ball, make a stop, make the difference.

  We take care of Ireland, 3–0, on Mother’s Day, getting two goals from Abby, which is a great sign. Abby doesn’t get the minutes she used to, but she is still a goal-scoring dynamo, a proven difference-maker. Having her confident and in a good place going into the World Cup is huge, even more so with Alex Morgan out with a bone bruise she suffered against New Zealand. Abby gets set up by Press on a cross for the first goal. Then I get the ball on the left end line, cut a defender, and hit a little chip in front that Abby heads in for number two.

  Abby buries two more goals i
n a 5–1 rout of Mexico a week later, getting the second on a sensational cross from Tobin Heath, who fakes her Mexican mark halfway to Guadalajara and lofts a ball that Abby knows just what to do with. Sydney Leroux scores twice as well, her best game of the year, and from start to finish we are firing at Mexico from near and far. Feeling superfit and confident, I return home for one last break before the World Cup. I take hundreds of shots and run the hill at Laurel Acres and do intervals on the track, grinding out rep after rep with James watching. I feel explosive, and I want to be even more explosive. I want to be able to take two steps toward a loose ball and leave everybody in my rearview mirror. This isn’t training for the sake of training; it’s training with a purpose.

  It’s training to win a World Cup.

  “You are going to have something left in the tank when everybody else’s is empty,” James tells me.

  Our send-off game before the World Cup is right at home, in Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey, against South Korea. Brian is there, and so are Karen and Kathy, my cousin Jaime, and others. My parents and siblings are not there. There has been no contact. It’s not something I can focus on right now. I want to crush it in this game. I want the perfect farewell before we head to Winnipeg, Canada, for the biggest soccer tournament of my life. I want this to be a big Jersey day all around.

  Our performance as a team in a 0–0 draw is well short of our best, and the media pretty much buries us for not pounding South Korea. While our approach was more direct, if less effective, than it has been recently, I am trying not to be worried about it.

  Who gets all worked up about the last game of spring training?

  No, it is not a vintage U.S. game, but negativity is like quicksand; you hang around it enough and it will take you all the way down and you will never be heard from again. I am hard enough on myself that I can make my own negativity, so I really don’t need any help.

  I am named the Player of the Match against South Korea, and though we didn’t get our desired result, I will take it. I am fitter than I have ever been. I have been training for this for years and feel more ready for this tournament than any other tournament I have ever played in in my life.