When Nobody Was Watching

by Carli Lloyd

  As I head out of Commonwealth Stadium and board the bus for our hotel, there is finally a glimmer of a break in the storm clouds that have been hanging low and dark over my psyche for the whole World Cup.

  It’s happening slowly, but it’s happening.

  I am about to be unleashed, I think. That PK is going to recharge me, uplift me. I am going to be a whole different player. You wait and see.

  I am named Player of the Match by the people on the FIFA Technical Committee. We’re in the quarterfinals. I don’t say it out loud to anyone, but as I look out the bus window at the big western Canadian sky, there’s a single thought in my head, above all others:

  I am back.

  17

  Addition by Subtraction

  THE GOOD FEELING over our advancement into the final eight of the World Cup is tempered by the loss of two frontline players, Megan Rapinoe and Lauren Holiday. Both of them will miss our quarterfinal against China in Ottawa for exactly what Jill and her staff were worried about with me: yellow cards. Pinoe and Lauren got carded for a second time in the Colombia game, and even though I think both of the calls were borderline at best, rules are rules. So now we go into our biggest game of the tournament without two mainstays.

  Two nights before the China game, Jill asks me to visit her in her room.

  “I’m thinking of changing things up and moving you forward and giving you room to roam behind the forward line,” she says. “We can have Morgan [Brian] sitting behind you. I’m not set on this yet, but I think it’s a good way to go. China is very organized defensively, and I think we’re going to need for you to be more of a presence in the attacking third.”

  Not that I am taking credit for shifting Jill’s thinking, but what she is suggesting is essentially what I tell the press after the Colombia game: that we need to open it up, play more freely, and exert high pressure on our opponents, coming after them from the start.

  Jill shows me clips of the Chinese defense, and we talk some more about my expanded role. I’m so happy I could hug her. I want nothing more than to be a true attacking midfielder. For all the heat we’ve taken in this tournament—and the media is burying us, even after three victories and a tie—I know we have better soccer in us, and I think we’re all ready to show it.

  As if to prove it, I settle a ball in the second minute, see Amy Rodriguez making a run toward goal, and flick it ahead to her between two defenders. Amy is in alone, a quality chance right out of the chute, but with the keeper rushing at her, she shanks her shot wide.

  Still, we send an early message to the Chinese, and we don’t let up. We apply high pressure, and we keep possession when we win the ball. It doesn’t result in immediate goals, but there’s no question we are dominating play, particularly at the end of the half when we string together nine or ten straight passes, starting with Becky Sauerbrunn and Julie Johnston in the back. We have the ball zipping around like a pinball, and a quick combination from Ali Krieger to Alex to ARod leads to a corner kick. Anyone who is paying attention can see we are a different team, bringing an attack that wasn’t there in the first four games.

  The first half finishes scoreless, but I like what we are doing and know we are going to keep the pressure on. Kelley O’Hara and I combine for a good chance in the opening minutes of the second, and soon after, Tobin Heath fights hard for a fifty-fifty ball near midfield and draws a foul in the process. Kling quickly takes the free kick, sliding it over to Julie, who is completely unmarked. Julie lifts a long ball into the box. I see it coming and make a run toward the goal. Though I am tightly marked, I believe if I anticipate correctly I can get my head on the ball.

  Julie’s ball is perfect. I get a good read on it and jump up, heading the ball downward, knocking it past the Chinese goalkeeper. It takes until the fifty-first minute, but we are on the board. I run off to the corner to celebrate with a karate kick to the flag.

  Two goals in two World Cup games? I will take it.

  China doesn’t seriously threaten for the rest of the second half, and for the first time in four games we are connecting and creating, scoring a victory that is much more one-sided than the 1–0 score line would suggest. For the second consecutive game, I am named Player of the Match. We move on to the semis to play Germany, which outlasted France in penalty kicks. Not many people give us much of a chance against Germany, two-time World Cup champions and the top-ranked team in the world, a side that has scored twenty goals and allowed only three in the tournament. (That’s an impressive goal differential, even factoring in that the Germans scored ten of those goals in one game against Ivory Coast.) We’re not concerned about who thinks what. We’re concerned only with getting better.

  Almost from the start of our training together a dozen years ago, James would be in my ear constantly, with that thick Aussie accent of his.

  “Don’t let the coach take you off the field,” he would say. “Play so it is not even an option. You want to get beyond politics and drama and all the nonsense? Just be better than everybody else. Give them no choice but to play you.”

  Now he is saying pretty much the same thing. When I tell him that Jill wants to keep me in the more forward position, even with Pinoe and Holiday back from their suspensions, he says, “Great. You know what the deal is. Play so she won’t even consider moving you back to where you were.”

  So that is my goal as we travel to Montreal for the semis. The difference in my mentality from where it was after the first three games is as far as Montreal is from Vancouver—the site of the World Cup final.

  Once the Germans get by France, they are the popular pick to win the whole thing. Celia Sasic, their star striker, is the leading scorer in the tournament, with six goals. Her teammate Anja Mittag is right behind her with five. Their captain, Nadine Angerer, might be the best keeper in the world who is not named Hope Solo, and she proves it almost from the start, because after we absorb a few minutes of high-flying German pressure, we are in serious attack mode.

  In the seventh minute, Julie runs onto a Pinoe corner kick, delivering a wicked header that Angerer makes a superb save on with her left foot. In the fourteenth minute, I slide a ball back to Tobin Heath, who threads it on the ground up the middle, a spectacular through ball that Alex runs onto. Alex one-times it, but again Angerer makes the stop with a left-footed block. Already this game feels as if it’s a heavyweight battle. The pace is furious, the intensity as real as the grass is phony. It is the best we’ve played in the entire tournament by far. We’re combining well, moving the ball quickly, making clever runs. The Germans look as if they have no idea how to handle us.

  The half ends with no score, but we keep coming at them. We know Germany played 120 minutes against France, and we are the fresher team. I have a good chance on a header off of another Pinoe corner kicker in the opening minutes of the second half but don’t get it on frame. Then, in the fifty-sixth minute, I chip a ball to Alex, and it looks as if it might be a breakaway before she gets tangled up with a defender and is called for a foul.

  Germany has raised its level early in this half, and it is generating some threats. We just need to weather it and come back even stronger. In the fifty-ninth minute, Germany plays a seemingly harmless ball out of midfield that bounces toward our goal. Julie is in full retreat to clear it, but Germany’s Alexandra Popp is running hard at goal and slips in front of Julie inside the box and is about to get off a shot from point-blank range when Julie, in desperation, reaches for Popp’s left shoulder and hauls her to the ground. The whistle blows. The referee points to the spot and gives Julie a yellow card. She actually gets off light, because it easily could’ve been a red card for impeding the progress of a player going in on goal.

  Julie has had a spectacular World Cup, but in this moment she is devastated by the opportunity she has given Germany to possibly steal the game. She starts to cry. Several players go over and put an arm around Julie to console her.

  As Sasic steps forward to take the kick, Hope grabs her water bottle
and goes for a stroll along the goal line. It is a very leisurely stroll. If there were flowers nearby, she would’ve stopped to pick them. She is out of the goal so long she could’ve gotten a card herself. Hope is clearly aiming to get in Sasic’s head, to freeze her. At first Sasic looks as if she isn’t sure she wants to take the kick. She seems to ask a few of her teammates if they want it. Hope finally returns to goal. Sasic puts her hands on her hips, looking very cavalier about the whole thing, then turns and claps her hands a few times. An instant before she starts her run-up she turns her head to the side and smiles. Now she makes her approach and drives a low, hard ball to the left. Hope dives to the right.

  Celia Sasic’s ball veers just outside the left post.

  The game is still tied. The crowd of some 51,000 people in Olympic Stadium lets out a collective roar. I let out my own roar.

  Sometimes, even in the heat of a big game, you can feel the momentum shift on the spot. This is one of those times.

  There is no way we are losing this game, I tell myself.

  I turn to Julie.

  “Keep your head up. Don’t worry about it,” I tell her. A couple of others make the same point.

  A few minutes later, I can see that Julie is still moping, beating herself up. I’ve gotten to know her well because she trained with James and me leading up to the World Cup. It’s time to take a sterner approach.

  “Cut that shit out, JJ. We have a game to win,” I say.

  About seven minutes after Sasic hits her ball wide left, I win control of a bouncing fifty-fifty ball and play it to Kling, who knocks it straight ahead to Alex, who has some space and is taking it. She’s carrying the dribble near the top of the box when German defender Annike Krahn gets in her path and basically hip-checks her, sending Alex flying. Alex lands hard, and by the time she does, there is a whistle, a yellow card, and a penalty kick for the United States.

  It is mine to take. It’s not clear at all if Krahn’s contact with Alex is inside or outside the box. For sure, the initial bump is outside. I am not going to explore the matter with the ref. I walk straightaway to get the ball and put it on the spot. I have already visualized the PK the night before. I am going to go exactly where I went against Colombia. I step back from the ball and go to my shooting position. I am leaning forward, slightly bent at the waist, eyes fixed on the ball, nothing else. I don’t look at the keeper or the crowd or anything else. Just the ball. I start my approach with a series of baby steps and then plant and kick, a clean, hard strike toward the upper right ninety. Angerer dives the opposite way. The ball rips into the net.

  U.S. 1, Germany 0.

  I take off running, clenching my fists, until my teammates catch up and mob me. I kiss my left ring finger and point to the television camera, my shout-out to Brian. Then it’s back to business. There are twenty-one minutes plus stoppage time remaining. There’s lots of work yet to do.

  I want no part of bunkering and letting Germany seize control of the game while we sit on our one-goal lead. I want to keep playing the way we have the whole game. In the seventy-sixth minute, I spin away from traffic, take a dribble, and nudge a ball out wide toward Kelley O’Hara, who has just come on for Tobin and is making a run down the right flank. It looks as if she might spring free before a German defender slide-tackles the threat away.

  Kelley and I are not done, though. In the eighty-fourth minute, Holiday steps in and strips a German player near midfield and makes a run before knocking it out wide to the left, where Abby catches up and settles it, playing it back to Kling. Kling edges into the middle, takes two dribbles as I move away from her, and slips into an open space in the left side of the box. Kling carves a great pass to me, and I take four quick dribbles, beat the defender out wide, and then cut a left-footed cross toward the middle, but away from Angerer. Kelley sees this all developing and makes a perfectly timed run, running onto my cross and spearing it with her right foot—into the goal.

  It’s her first international goal, and her timing is impeccable.

  U.S. 2, Germany 0.

  Still, there can’t be any letup. If Germany were to somehow answer quickly and make it a one-goal game, who knows what could happen? It’s the final minutes of the sixth game of the World Cup, and I am going strong, powering up. I have James and Laurel Acres and years of fitness work to thank for that. In the ninetieth minute, the Germans are advancing the ball up the right side, and I make a thirty-yard sprint to apply pressure and disrupt it. Honestly, it’s probably not a sprint I would have made in the first couple of games when I was weighted down with discouragement. It’s a sprint powered by belief. My energy supply feels inexhaustible. I go all out until the referee blows the whistle three times and points to midfield, and our whole bench rushes onto the field.

  I am named Player of the Match for the third straight time, but the heroes are everywhere. Our back five completely shuts down the most explosive offense at this tournament, and Kling, especially, is huge on her overlapping runs. Morgan Brian, at twenty-two the youngest player on the team, suffered what looked to be a nasty head injury in a violent first-half collision in the air with Alexandra Popp but is almost perfect otherwise, keeping possession and playing with tremendous poise at holding mid. Hope totally gets into Sasic’s head on the PK and makes the saves she needs to.

  We are bound for Vancouver, British Columbia, and the World Cup final, a place few thought we would be even a week ago. I call James in Greece after the game.

  “You’re not done yet, Ms. Lloyd,” he says. “You’ve trained for this moment for your whole life. This is no time to let up. Finish the job. Bring home the World Cup. Show the whole world the kind of player you are.”

  18

  World-Beater

  YOU KNOW HOW JAMES WOULD ALWAYS TELL ME, “Play every game as if it’s a World Cup final”? He doesn’t have to say a thing on July 5, 2015, because I am in BC Place in Vancouver, and it is a World Cup final. The stadium is on the north side of False Creek, an inlet that separates downtown from the rest of the city, and it is inundated with true USA soccer fans who are hoping to see the first happy ending to a World Cup since 1999.

  I have my own room for the final, on the twenty-fourth floor of the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, and everything is great the night before except that I keep waking up. I am thinking about the game, dreaming about the game. I don’t visualize scoring five goals in the final, the way I did a few months earlier during a training session on Ark Road, but the game is in my head nonstop. I am so ready to play that my heart is racing, and I don’t know how I am going to make it until the 5:00 PM kickoff. We have three team meals before the game, and each time we gather all I can think is, Can’t we just play already?

  I have so much energy I don’t know what to do with it. After breakfast I go for my fifteen-minute jog through downtown. Some people recognize me and wave and wish me good luck. I smile and wave back and keep going. I feel as though I could run for days. I organize everything in my room into tidy piles—the keepsakes and the Player of the Match frames and the clothes I bought on the James-ordered shopping trip. I am the same neat freak on the day of a World Cup final as I was as a schoolgirl back on Black Baron Drive.

  One of our massage therapists stretches me out, and after a bite of lunch I hydrate and stretch some more and relax in the room with my headphones on. I’ve done most of my visualization the night before, but I get some more done throughout the day, not focusing on results so much as the process of playing the game . . . tackling hard, sending passes near and far, being strong in the attacking third.

  Finally, it is almost time to leave for the game. I look down from my window and see a big crowd of fans lining the barricaded walkway we’ll take to get on our bus. There are hundreds of them, waiting to give us a proper send-off. We meet in the lobby and then walk through a gauntlet of rousing cheers and waving flags and choruses of the “I believe that we will win” chant that has swept through our fan base. I am filming it on my phone, smiling as I go. It is
a very cool spectacle. I board the bus and go to my spot, second row from the back on the right. Once again it’s time to cue up “Dreamer” on my iPod and reread James’s final World Cup email.

  Here’s what he writes:

  Ms. Lloyd,

  I have spent a lot of time reflecting and the thing that sticks out the most to me is that you are once again going into this final as the best Carli Lloyd there ever was.

  You have broken barriers again and gone to a level that no one was expecting and are on the brink of shocking the world again.

  Today you will rise again because:

  1) Apart from being the best Carli Lloyd ever, you are going into this game loaded with a mental state that no one else is carrying and the only player with a body that can carry an entire team.

  2) Because you are going into this game knowing you haven’t achieved anything yet and you will once again fight like an underdog that never gives up and claws her way to the top.

  3) Because tactically you are playing in a position that allows you to express yourself and get into positions to win the game all on your own.

  4) Because the Japanese rely on shapes rather than pressure and this will allow you to showcase the marvelous skill you possess and stick a dagger into the folks that dared to call you unskilled.

  5) Because you are the only player that can take a game and own it.

  6) Because you are the most intimidating and feared player on the planet and the Japanese know it.

  Time to make this yours. Time to show the world that there is only one Ms. Lloyd.

  As usual start simple and build. Play your game and act like the midfielder that you are. Combine, dribble, shoot, get on the end of crosses and get back and admirably help out on defense. A fighting and involved Carli Lloyd will get to the Japanese. You will make them fold and take over.