Over the years, Carli Lloyd has made a lot of headlines for the U.S. women’s national soccer team, both with her on-field play for them from 2005-2021 and with her prominent advocacy in their fight for equal pay. Since Lloyd’s 2021 retirement, she’s also continued to make headlines, including with comments (on Hope Solo’s podcast and Alexi Lalas’ podcast) that there was a lack of “unity” on the team in recent years and a “culture shift.” (Lloyd has taken a lot of criticism for that, and has claimed she wasn’t talking about race.) Now, Lloyd (seen above following her final NWSL match last October) will be a studio analyst for the USWNT’s next match, a friendly against Uzbekistan Sunday on the Fox broadcast network:
Excited to announce I’ll be in-studio with @FOXSports this Saturday for my analyst debut! Look forward to discussing all things @USWNT and their friendly vs. Uzbekistan with everyone watching at home starting at 5 PM ET on FOX. 😉
— Carli Lloyd (@CarliLloyd) April 6, 2022
It’s going to be interesting to see how Lloyd is received as an analyst, especially considering those recent public criticisms she lobbed at the national team and its “culture” in her last few years. Many players who were there during Lloyd’s tenure remain part of the USWNT today. But she has offered more praise for the team recently, including saying she was impressed with their younger players during this year’s SheBelieves Cup:
While watching the national team’s most recent games against Czech Republic, New Zealand, and Iceland during the 2022 SheBelieves Cup, Lloyd said she “saw that hunger back” that she feels the team has been lacking.
“I saw that drive. I saw glimpses of that, and that’s what we need,” Lloyd added. “That’s the duty of these younger players, if they’re going to continue to play for this team, is they have to continue to keep sharing that culture and bridging the next several generations with it.”
We’ll see what Lloyd has to say about the USWNT on this Fox broadcast Sunday, and how her comments are received.
[Carli Lloyd on Twitter; photo from Mitsu Yasukawa/The (Bergen) Record, via USA Today Sports]
