U.S. women’s national team captain Lindsey Horan said Carli Lloyd’s comments following the 0-0 draw with Portugal were “kind of frustrating for me to hear, especially knowing this team and how much we put into every single game” during a news conference at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup on Thursday. Here’s what you need to know:
- Lloyd criticized the USWNT for dancing and smiling after the final group stage match, adding “you’re lucky to not be going home right now.”
- When asked about the remarks, Horan said, “I always want to defend my team and say like, you have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes, you have no idea every single angle, every single training, like what we’re doing individually, collectively, et cetera.”
- USWNT coach Vlatko Andonovski said it is “insane” to question the mentality of the USWNT after Lloyd’s comments.
What else did Horan say when asked about Lloyd?
“In this game you can’t question that we didn’t want to win the game. You can’t question we weren’t working as hard as we possibly could. We know we could have done better,” the USWNT captain said.
“Again, it was a really good team that we face. So you know, for me, it’s like, again, it’s noise and again, it’s an opinion and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. And you know, that’s how it goes.
“For anyone to question our mentality, you know, hurts a little bit, but at the end of the day, it’s like, doesn’t really matter. I don’t really care. It’s you know, what’s going on inside of here. It’s what’s going on inside of the team, and we’re getting ready for that next week.”
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“It wouldn’t be a major tournament if we weren’t facing Sweden. We always find a way to play them in these big tournaments. We know that they’re a very good team. Every time that we play them, it’s a massive battle and they’re similar to us in that case,” Horan said. “We know what they can bring, and we know what we can bring, and I think that’s the main focus right now. What we can do to expose them and win this game.”
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How is the team dealing with outside noise?
“We are not panicking. We have made it to the round of 16. I think that we haven’t played our best soccer yet which is the most exciting part for us,” teammate Lynn Williams, who was also at the news conference, said. “We are a team that are going to battle and even when we haven’t played our best soccer, I think we’ve only had one shot on goal and luckily for us, but it’s been one shot in three games.”
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Horan added that the team wants to be a part of “these big moments, these pressure cookers.”
“You guys (the media) always want to talk about us and we’re gonna take that, that pressure. We’re going to with it but we’re going to focus on ourselves, look at everything internally, and try to keep the noise out as much as possible. But use it to our advantage too because we’re going to out, and and we’re going to fight, and we’re going to do everything that we’ve done in past World Cups, past major tournaments, to go win this game.”
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(Photo: Jenna Watson / USA Today)