Two-time Olympic gold medalist Carli Lloyd said Thursday that, yes, the women’s national team lost a scrimmage against 15-year-old boy...
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Carli Lloyd said Thursday that, yes, the women’s national team lost a scrimmage against 15-year-old boys, adding that males are “bigger, stronger, [and] faster!”
Lloyd, a legend in women’s soccer, retired in 2021. During her career, the former striker was a major player in securing two World Cup championships, two Olympic golds, and was twice named FIFA Player of the Year.
The soccer star was asked online by an X user, “Carli is it [true] you lost to a bunch of 15 year old boys?”
Lloyd acknowledged the matchup and seemed to emphasize the physical difference between males and females. “Yes it’s true,” she wrote back. “I know…thousands of people have already brought that up. They were good. We actually lost to a youth Bayern Munich team in my career as well but then we went on to win [the] Olympics and World Cups. So…..”
Another X user chimed in, captioning a photo of Lloyd in her soccer uniform next to a young male player. “Typically when someone mentions this, I’ll post one of the pub photos of you standing with one of the boys… who is a foot taller than you. I mean, c’mon!” the comment read.
“Haha. They should beat us. Bigger, stronger, faster!” Lloyd reacted. “Boys always gave us a run for our money! It was great prep.”
Lloyd made headlines last month when she explained why she stood before the bronze-medal match of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, as the rest of the U.S. soccer team took a knee.
“In that moment, we were kneeling — it was right before kickoff, so it wasn’t necessarily like a protest per se, but I guess everybody in the English Premier league was just taking a knee before kickoff,” Lloyd explained to CBS Sports. “So we had done it every game, and I knew that was going to be my last world championship game, so I wanted to stand.”
Lloyd added that she was “sure” her decision to be the only player to stand communicated something to viewers, and said, “I just thought that, we had done enough of the kneeling, and I just wanted to stand at my last world championship game.”
In September, Lloyd took on former teammate Megan Rapinoe for kneeling during 2016 games, which she said was a distraction for the team.
“I had conversations with Megan [Rapinoe] — like, this isn’t a personal thing,” the athlete said. “What she’s doing, it was distracting our team, it was distracting others to play.”
“I was a captain at that time as well, so I said to her, it’s not to dampen what you’re trying to achieve with it — it just became, everything was focused on Megan kneeling and nobody was talking about the reasoning why, is what I was trying to get at,” Lloyd explained. “And so I had conversations with Megan during that. And every game we rolled up to, it was the camera to her, but no one’s talking about actually what the messaging was about, it was just, she’s kneeling and no one else is kneeling.”