Lindsey Horan; USWNT Captain, Yelled At Carli Lloyd
After making passionate charges against the team’s “changing mentality and DNA” following their appalling performance against Portugal, Lloyd, who has now admitted her remarks were “extremely harsh,” caused a commotion on Tuesday.
Despite harsh criticism from former colleague and soccer star Carli Lloyd, US Women’s National Team captain Lindsey Horan has defended her players. After making passionate charges against the team’s “changing mentality and DNA” following their appalling performance against Portugal, Lloyd, who has now admitted her remarks were “extremely harsh,” caused a commotion on Tuesday.
In response to the match, the former USWNT captain remarked: “I just talked about what the mentality of this team has been about and has been passed down from generation to generation. But the problem is that when you win and you get things, winning has taken on a different meaning.”
She cast doubt on the group’s motivation—or lack thereof—to succeed. “It is no longer that we want to win because we want to win. No, we want everything that comes with winning, and we think we can roll out and win games. And that’s not the case, and teams see that. They see the arrogance in the US and see that they’re not this unstoppable team. They see that they’re able to be broken down and beaten.”
The comments made it to the USWNT dressing room, despite most players’ repeated requests that they stay inside the basecamp bubble. Lindsey Horan vehemently defended her team on Thursday during the news conference.
“Yeah, it’s kind of frustrating for me to hear, especially knowing this team and knowing how much we put into every single game, how much preparation we put into every single game, in our training, and seeing just generally how hard we work,” she said as she took the mic as captain.
She appeared disappointed and irritated in response to Lloyd’s remarks. “In the game, you can’t question that we didn’t want to win it. You can’t question that we weren’t working as hard as we possibly could. We know that things could have been better; we know we could have done more; we know that we could have done better with the opportunities.”
Lindsey Horan concluded, “Again, it was a good team that we faced. For me, it’s noise, and again, it’s an opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and we know that’s how it goes. For me, I always want to defend my team and say, and you have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes; you have no idea in every single training what we’re doing individually and collectively, etc. For anyone to question our mentality, it hurts a little bit, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter; I don’t really care. We’re just focused on the next game.”
“For anyone to question our mentality, it hurts a little bit, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter; I don’t really care.”
Lindsey Horan
The week before the competition, Horan, the team’s appointed captain, stated that despite their dismal early results, they were “not panicking.” “As I’ve said before, pressure is a privilege, and as the US Women’s team, we’re used to that. We’re trying to keep the noise out as much as possible but also use it to our advantage because we’re going to go out and fight and do everything that we’ve done in the past World Cups to go and win this game.”
The United States will face Sweden in round 16 after placing second in their group. For the pivotal match on August 8, the group takes a Friday flight to Melbourne.
