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While Lloyd has been retired from professional soccer for over two years, her competitive nature and desire to improve have not diminished. In 2023, she was featured on the inaugural season of Fox’s “Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test,” in which 16 recruits were thrust into rigorous training exercises meant to mimic those of the U.S. Special Forces. Lloyd won the challenge, beating out athletes like former NBA star Dwight Howard and former NFL wide receiver Danny Amendola.

While training for golf isn’t exactly the same as training for the special forces, it still comes with its challenges, she said.

"I don't walk back on anything I said," Lloyd said. "I speak from experience, being part of the team, I played with a lot of those players, played under Vlatko [Andonovski], was still very much a part of that cycle. I unfortunately saw the trajectory of where the team was heading. Unfortunately it was not a good performance, and what I said was exactly how I felt and came from the heart."

Lloyd added that USWNT wasn't fit enough at the recent World Cup and compared the team's efforts to those of England, which reached the final for the first time in its history.

"We have all the resources poured in, we have the talent pool, we have the support, we have the experience, and so there's all this narrative of 'the world has caught up,' but in my opinion the team wasn't fit enough, the team didn't show that mentality that is needed to win like you're seeing with England," Lloyd said.

“This wasn’t anything that was scripted,” Lloyd told The Athletic Tuesday morning over the phone from Australia. “This was a reaction to what I was seeing, what I was feeling, what came from my heart. I poured my heart and soul into this team for 17 years. I came into (the USWNT) not understanding how hard you have to work and learned how hard from the players that had come before me who instilled that mentality and DNA within the team. If I was going to stay on the main team, I had to work hard every single day. It’s probably one of the most unhealthy environments someone could place themselves in but one of the most rewarding as well, and I would do it over again in a heartbeat.

“It used to be that everybody feared the U.S. and the U.S. was going in confident to these tournaments, but I think when you win, it’s easy to get comfortable. I think this is a humble moment for the program, the players, the coaching staff, and it’s a wake-up call for the entire program because it’s easy to turn a blind eye when the senior team is winning,” Lloyd said on FOX Sports.

It was because she cares.

"I am always going to care," Lloyd told me in a telephone interview a few hours after the USA result. "That was 17 years of my life and … it gave me everything in my life. 

Now serving as a studio analyst for FOX Sports during Australia/New Zealand 2023, the two-time World Cup champion shared some of her observations from the Vietnam match — and her thoughts on what the U.S. must improve — before her former team meets the powerful Dutch in a high-profile rematch of the 2019 finale.  

On the eve of the Women’s World Cup, two-time Olympic gold medalist, two-time World Cup champion and Fox Sports analyst Carli Lloyd spends a few minutes kicking things around with...