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USWNT star Carli Lloyd makes startling revelations in new memoir
Carli Lloyd is driven.
This much we knew already about the 34-year-old United States women’s national team captain and superstar, who is also the reigning World Player of the Year and Women’s World Cup winner.
On Monday, she will publish her memoir, “When Nobody Was Watching: My Hard-Fought Journey to the Top of the Soccer World.” And in it, she makes some startling revelations about how her turn-around from a dead-end college player who’d been cut to one of the greatest women’s players ever also strained and then broke her relationship with her family. And how she felt cornered, given no choice but to keep pursuing soccer as her family fell apart.
In an advance excerpt published by SI.com, Lloyd talks at length about the slow decay of her family bonds.
It begins when an Australian coach, James Galanis, turns her career around and she becomes a full-fledged national teamer.
My parents are having a difficult time letting go. They have always been there for me; I won’t ever forget that. But now I’m an adult and I need to make my own decisions – and they’re having a hard time with that. They want to choose an agent for me. They are constantly on me about how I should interact with my teammates and my coaches. I know they mean well, but I feel increasingly stressed. More and more, they seem angry and resentful, as though I have closed them out of my soccer career.
Things slowly got worse when being around her family grew stressful and draining. It all came to a head before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Even though I love my family, home is about the last place I want to be now. I return to Jersey for a few weeks before I begin final preparations for my first Olympic Games. One night when I am out, I call home and my father answers. He starts right in on me. I don’t want to hear it.
“You never want to hear it,” he says. “Why don’t you get your stuff out of the house or I will throw it out the window?” I can’t believe it has reached this point. But true to stubborn form, I don’t back down.
“If that’s how you want it, fine,” I say.
Lloyd and her family are now completely cut out of each other’s lives. Her parents took no part in her World Player of the Year celebrations and she, in turn, has been frozen out of big family moments.
When my father had open-heart surgery, nobody told me until well afterward. When my sister got married, I was not invited. I love my family and would like nothing more than to reconcile with them. Nobody has done more for me than my parents, who devoted untold amounts of time and money that allowed me to play the game I love. It’s no exaggeration to say I never would have gotten anywhere near a World Cup, an Olympics or even the U.S. national team without them. I have never forgotten that, and I never will.
I have missed sharing all these things with them, but I hope that will one day change.
Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.
