Carli Lloyd has been a lightning rod as a soccer broadcaster at Fox Sports, just as she was as a soccer player for the U.S. women’s national team for nearly two decades.
Whether it’s questioning her former teammates’ competitive spirit or challenging the legitimacy of their public personas, Lloyd does not mince her words even when it comes to the national team she once captained.
In an interview on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast released Thursday, Lloyd detailed her mindset as a broadcaster and her take on why women’s soccer followers and fans criticize her so harshly when she is negative.
“I’m not here to win a popularity contest. I have my circle of people that respect me, like me, that support me,” Lloyd said. “I’m here to do a job, and I’ve never been shy of kind of speaking the truth and saying it how it is. And it’s not out of spite; it’s not to get clicks, it’s not to cause drama, it’s there to just give an honest assessment.”
Lloyd said her worries around the 2023 women’s World Cup team largely came true and noted that new manager Emma Hayes had echoed her concerns about the team’s mentality.
“Obviously, I had a lot to say at the women’s World Cup with the team, and a lot of that came true. I said stuff before, and I said stuff as the tournament went on and during, and look what’s happening now,” Lloyd told Deitsch. “So the more comfortable that I’ve gotten with the layout and the outline of how we do things at Fox Sports has just made me more and more comfortable to give my honest opinion.”
More broadly, Lloyd criticized the women’s soccer industry, U.S. Soccer, and the reporters covering the sport. In her mind, the sport insulates itself from criticism in the name of positivity.
“The women’s soccer world is a bit of a bubble. It’s almost like you’re not allowed to say something because it may offend somebody or it may hurt somebody. That’s not my job,” she said. “People respect you for sitting on a desk and giving an honest remark, and I had several people reach out to me thanking me for the comments.”
Lloyd said she believes Warner Bros. Discovery’s coverage of the USWNT continues the trend of kissing the ring of U.S. Soccer. She believes it damages the sport and creates an uncomfortable dynamic between players and reporters.
“I also think that in the women’s soccer world especially, a lot of these journalists, a lot of these people that cover the game, it’s great that there’s a lot more coverage … but I also think that a lot of them almost want to be buddies with these players,” Lloyd added. “They have their bias toward certain players, certain players they like, certain players they like for their on-field performance, but certain players they like for what they stand for off the field. And they can’t separate that.”
Lloyd notably parted from her teammates and 2022 and chose not to kneel for the national anthem in protest of systemic racism in the U.S. She later challenged the authenticity of the protest.
Now, Lloyd believes the perceptions people have of her from these charged moments lead the audience to think less of her as an analyst.
“I think that everybody should be respected whether they want to take a stand for something or whether they do not want to take a stand for something,” Lloyd said. “People start to label me, they start to call me racist, they start to call me homophobic, all sorts of names that I’ve heard. And they have no idea who I am as a person, and that’s wild to me. So I think the majority of the people that do come at me with some of these comments really have a personal issue with me, and that’s on them.”
Lloyd also wondered why she was marked with a scarlet letter for not kneeling while those who went with the crowd were immediately assumed to be in the right.
“A lot of people that mark all these things and tweet out all these things on X. Are you really being a good person back in your own life?” Lloyd asked. “That’s the question that you need to ask yourself, and I think for me, it’s doing those actionable things that actually can get to the depths of people.”
Big picture, Lloyd clearly has a bone to pick with the soccer world that has built up over the years. But whether she likes it or not, the nature of the USWNT’s dominance created an environment in which her words and actions as one of its leaders would be dissected. Now, as an analyst, she not only carries that reputation with her but has amplified it with the types of critiques she has levied against the USWNT from afar.
If Lloyd came on Fox and criticized the USWNT for not effectively playing out from the back or timing their breaks on the attack well enough, she could likely keep her bosses happy and deliver for an audience. But like her Fox colleague Alexi Lalas, she has adopted a more bombastic style that gets her into the headlines.
By nature, a dominant, outspoken women’s sports team that takes on the Man for a fair share of revenue and tussles with the president over race relations is going to be judged differently than the average squad. Excusing oneself from collective action is a choice, too. Lloyd didn’t ask for any of this, but she’s not exactly running away from it either.
