USWNT's Carli Lloyd retiring as the most clutch international player ever
By Doug McIntyre
FOX Sports Soccer Writer
Picture a Mount Rushmore of women’s soccer.
There’s Christine Sinclair, the freshly minted Olympic gold medalist with Canada and top scorer in international history, men’s or women’s. Abby Wambach, whose record Sinclair smashed last year, has to be there.
So does 1999 United States World Cup-winning captain Michelle Akers, whom many consider the best player ever. You can make a case for Akers’ fellow Americans Kristine Lilly and Mia Hamm, as well as for Brazil’s Marta, Germany’s Birgit Prinz and China’s Sun Wen.
And, finally, you simply can't leave Carli Lloyd out of the conversation.
Lloyd — who announced her retirement at age 39 on Monday, less than two weeks after she helped the USWNT to a bronze medal at the Toyko Games — was rarely the face of the U.S. squad during her glittering, 17-year run with the national team.
But her career is second to none. And when it comes to big-game players, Lloyd is easily the most clutch international player of all time.
Lloyd didn’t score for the U.S. until more than a year after she joined the senior squad in 2005. But after she started scoring, she never stopped. Her two strikes in that Aug. 5 bronze-medal match were Nos. 127 and 128, pulling the scrappy forward-midfielder from the New Jersey side of Philadelphia’s suburbs into a tie with Prinz for fifth on the all-time list.
Lloyd will add to her 312 appearances, the second-most in history behind Lilly, when she suits up in red, white and blue a few final times in to-be-announced friendlies this fall. She’s one of just four players to break the 300-cap mark.
For all of those gaudy stats, though, Lloyd will mostly be remembered simply as a winner.
Wambach was the undisputed star of the 2008 U.S. Olympic squad, but it was Lloyd who scored the gold medal clincher in the finale in Beijing. Four years later in London, she did it again.
Those turned out to be mere preludes to her greatest moment, of course: the 13-minute hat trick she bagged against Japan in the first half of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup final in Canada, leading the U.S. to their first World Cup crown in 16 years.
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Not bad for a player who was once cut from the U.S under-21 team.
That’s the other thing we’ll remember about Lloyd: her perseverance. She overcame serious ankle and shoulder injuries. She played hurt. She trained like a maniac, which, along with her steely determination, enabled her to produce at an all-planet level right to the eve of her 40s.
She also did what few truly great athletes ever manage, embracing (if not quite accepting) a supporting role as the U.S. repeated as World Cup champs two summers ago in France. Then-U.S. coach Jill Ellis determined that Lloyd would be best in a substitute role and didn’t change course even as Tobin Heath struggled throughout the competition.
Despite coming off the bench in six of the seven games, Lloyd scored three times and recorded the highest goals-to-minutes ratio of anyone at the tournament. Her teammates rewarded her by having her hoist the trophy first.
It’s fitting that one of the last memories U.S. fans will have of Lloyd is of her running sprints immediately after the Americans' heartbreaking semifinal loss to Canada. Lloyd had almost rescued her team yet again, but her header in the dying moments was stopped by the crossbar.
Nobody was more disappointed afterward. Lloyd made no secret of her desire to walk away at the top. But hey, there was another match to play.
She’s still got a few more to go.
"Through all the goals, the trophies, the medals and the championships won, what I am most proud of is that I’ve been able to stay unapologetically me," Lloyd said in the statement announcing the news. "Everyone sees the moments of glory, but I have cherished the work behind the scenes and the adversity that I’ve had to overcome to get to those glorious moments.
"Every single day I stepped out onto the field, I played as if it was my last game," she added.
It showed. Sometime this fall, that last game will arrive. In addition to those four U.S. exhibitions, Lloyd will finish the National Women’s Soccer League season with her hometown Gotham FC.
Enjoy one of the best ever while you still can.
One of the most prominent soccer journalists in North America, Doug McIntyre has covered United States men’s and women’s national teams in more than a dozen countries, including multiple FIFA World Cups. Before joining FOX Sports, the New York City native was a staff writer for Yahoo Sports and ESPN. Follow him on Twitter @ByDougMcIntyre.
