If you’re the kind of player who doesn’t like kneeling for social justice, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team was apparently a poisonou...
If you’re the kind of player who doesn’t like kneeling for social justice, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team was apparently a poisonous place to be.
So says Carli Lloyd, the American women’s soccer star who made news for not taking a knee during last summer’s Olympics in Tokyo.
Lloyd, who retired in 2021, blasted the culture of the soccer team during a recent interview on a podcast hosted by former teammate Hope Solo.
According to a Tuesday report in the New York Post, Lloyd fired shots at the culture of the national team during her appearance on the SiriusXM podcast “Hope Solo Speaks.”
“Even within our squad, the culture has changed,” she said.
“It was really tough and challenging to be playing these last seven years. To be quite honest, I hated it.”
Lloyd, 39, said her teammates made her loathe playing.
“It wasn’t fun going in. It was only for love of the game, really, for me. I wanted to win and I wanted to help the team, but the culture within the team was the worst I’ve ever seen it,” she said.
“I’m hoping that the future is bright and some things change.”
Solo, a former goalie for the national team who has had a close friendship with Lloyd going back 15 years, said it was “really sad” but understood what she was going through.
“When I got fired in 2016 … every time I left for camp my husband Jerramy [Stevens] hated to see me sad,” Solo said.
“I didn’t want to go to the social aspect of camp,” she said. “I wanted to train my ass off. I wanted to work my butt off. I wanted to play games. But I didn’t want to be around everybody and the culture of the team. It was really difficult. I don’t think people understand how difficult emotionally and mentally that is.
“It’s tough. I just wanted to be a professional athlete. I wanted to be cutthroat and I wanted to win. But you still have to play the political and social game sometimes. That’s hard for an introvert like myself. It was really difficult,” Solo added.
Lloyd won gold medals with the team in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics and World Cup titles in 2015 and 2019.
In both Olympic Gold medal wins, she scored the winning goal.
Yet, Lloyd became better known during the 2021 Olympic run because she wouldn’t fit in among the rest of the team members who took a knee for social justice — albeit not during the national anthem, because it would clash with Olympic rules.
However, even if it wasn’t taking place during “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the implicit message being sent was that progressive values had won and, if you didn’t take the knee, you were going to be ostracized.
Not that this helped the team’s play on the pitch any. In the first fixture in which they took the knee, the U.S. women were blown out 3-0 by Sweden despite being overwhelming favorites in the match and the Olympics overall.
During the game, Rapinoe said she wanted “to put a mirror in front of everyone and say: ‘Relax. We’re good.’”
Not quite as good as they thought, however. The United States didn’t even reach the final, finishing third despite considerable hype.
Before the Olympics, Rapinoe made it clear that unabashed pride in the United States wasn’t part of her MO, either. When asked what the flag and our nation meant to her, she said, “I see American pride or at least my personal pride or what I think that the flag should mean is, like, an impossible standard in which we are always trying to get to. Like, we’re not there. We were never there.
“First of all, the country was, you know, founded not on freedom and liberty and justice for all. I think we can just start to be very honest with ourselves about that. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have some of those qualities and that we can work towards some of those qualities.
“But this country was founded on chattel slavery and the brutal and ruthless system of slavery. So let’s just, like, all be really honest about that.”
I never thought I’d see the point where Howard Zinn’s unexamined pseudo-intellectual piffle and national athletics would collide but apparently we’ve gotten there. Good work.
After the tournament, Rapinoe continued to make headlines, although not for her performance. In September, she appeared at the Met Gala in New York City with a clutch purse that read, “In Gay We Trust,” replacing “God” in the national motto of the United States.
In case you’ve managed to miss any and all coverage of Rapinoe over the two hours of her 15 minutes of fame, she identifies as a lesbian. Yes, lesbian, you hidebound conservative. Don’t just say you accept it, say how it moves you to tears and how she’s an inspiration to your daughter and your son, who will no doubt be your second daughter in a few years once he comes to terms with his real gender. Weep in admiration, plebes!
She also attacked then-President Donald Trump on numerous occasions, refusing to sing the national anthem or put her hand over her heart in what she called an “F you” to Trump and his administration in 2019 and saying of a potential White House visit, “I’m not going to the f***ing White House.”
Rapinoe also was one of the first to join former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protests in 2016.
All of this hasn’t exactly endeared her team to America, or at least half of it. Unsurprising, then, that the team hasn’t even endeared itself to the team, either.
This was clearly going to be Lloyd’s last rodeo, and she seems to be happy to be done with the squad. Consider, however, that there are younger players who are being made just as miserable by these woke shenanigans.
We’re a year away from another Women’s World Cup and two years from another Olympics. Let’s hope the team won’t suffer another divisive debacle like it did in Tokyo.
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