News

Her career spanned the USWNT tenures of four different coaches, two different American professional leagues, and seven different club environments. Her defining feature as a competitor was an uncanny ability for picking her moments. In 2015, pre-World Cup final hat trick, she was described by Kim McCauley as "the weirdest world class professional athlete ever.” Sometimes Lloyd looked like she was coasting in meaningless friendlies, wandering in and out of dangerous spaces and disappearing into the midfield as different teammates took their time in the spotlight. But then, like clockwork, when the moment  called for a big goal in a big game, Lloyd would be exactly where she was needed. 

She scored game-winners in two tightly contested Olympic gold medal matches, one early in extra time against Brazil in 2008, and a brace in regulation against Japan in 2012. Her hat trick in the 2015 World Cup final provided a cushion for Lauren Holiday’s game-winning goal, and the goals themselves were iconic as much for their audacity and vision as for  their competitive importance. There will never be a moment again quite like her half-field dagger in that game—the growing parity in the global game won’t allow it—and it will remain the stuff of legend forever.

That’s all well and good, except Lloyd doesn’t do things every other normal human does. Only one human has ever played more international soccer games for their country than Lloyd’s 312. Only three humans have ever scored more than her 128 international goals. Just one United States Women’s National Team player has matched Lloyd’s eight career hat tricks. 

And no human has scored more goals after the age of 30 than Lloyd has. In fact, since the day she turned 30, no player anywhere in the world has scored as many goals as Lloyd.

That drive hadn’t gone away. Last year, she said she wouldn't have continued playing for the US if Jill Ellis, who demoted her to a supersub role in the team’s victorious campaign at the 2019 World Cup, had remained as coach. This year, she launched some barbs at one of the most experienced women’s soccer journalists in the US, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Tannenwald, after the “hometown dude” dared to express some doubt that Lloyd would make the 18-player Olympic roster.

That wasn’t Lloyd’s first run-in with the media. After the 2016 Olympics, she refused to answer questions until the Houston Chronicle’s Corey Roepken, who had questioned why she had taken more time off than expected between playing in the Games and returning to the Houston Dash, was dismissed from the assembled group of reporters. Her reputation for blocking people on Twitter was captured in a "WoSo World Bingo" meme.

Lloyd has always insisted on doing things her own way, even to the point of fraying relationships. She spent much of her career with Australian personal coach James Galanis, who encouraged her to play with a chip on her shoulder and even helped her find adversaries whose enmity, real or exaggerated, could motivate her. That relationship contributed to a rift with her family that lasted through the peak of her career.

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 Tokyo 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.

Lloyd had been dropping hints into her interviews about the price of playing soccer at an elite level up to and beyond her 39th birthday. She talked about the sacrifices made by those around her, most notably her husband of five years, Brian Hollins, and how it was time simply to experience another sort of life. And still there were many in the soccer media who contended Lloyd never would consent to leaving the national team by choice.

She had displayed such insistence about her place in the game, on the USWNT, in these final few years that it was reasonable to assume she lacked the ability to shut it down. But she will finish this season with NJ/NY Gotham FC of the NWSL and play four fall friendly games with the USWNT, and that will be it.

And she was leaving with heartache.

On the runs that have nourished her, day after day, rain or shine. The distance runs and intervals. The early mornings and afternoons. The hotel stairwells or clandestine workouts at a nearby field. The stubbornness when coaches have tried to “deny” her.

She reflected on 16-plus years of it; on the times it didn’t yield results; on the times people questioned her.

And as she reflected, she felt proud. Proud of “just never wavering,” she said. “Just being me. Unapologetically me.”