Carli Lloyd’s most famous World Cup run came when the pressure felt almost unbearable. The former U.S. Women’s National Team captain says the weight of wanting to win in 2015 left the squad paralyzed at first, and left her personally in a dark place.
That same tournament eventually flipped her mindset. After a lineup change pushed her closer to goal, Lloyd scored in every game the rest of the way and finished with a legendary hat trick in the final against Japan.
From Pressure to Release
Lloyd told Women’s Health that the team’s early struggle was less about talent than tension. “The weight of wanting it so badly in the beginning really kind of paralyzed us all,” she said.
She also said the pressure felt especially intense on her own shoulders. “The amount of pressure that I felt, it was heavy, and I was kind of in a deep, dark place—not really feeling confident about myself, and all of these thoughts and things running through my mind.”
When Lauren Cheney Holiday and Megan Rapinoe were suspended for the quarterfinal, Lloyd moved higher on the field and found the reset she needed. She said the lesson was to stop fixating on outcomes and focus on the process instead.
A Different Life After Soccer
Years later, Lloyd is now far from the pressure cooker of professional soccer. She is a mom to daughter Harper, who is 20 months old, and she is pregnant with her second child, due in September.
She also works as a studio analyst for FOX Sports covering the men’s World Cup, bringing the same big-stage experience into a new role. The former player says she is more comfortable letting things unfold now, both on television and at home.
“I’m definitely in the moment more than I ever was in my career,” she says. “It’s just been really freeing and refreshing, this life after soccer that I’ve had.”
Motherhood Changes Everything
Lloyd says she would be “a totally different mom” if she had had children 10 years ago, when her career was still at its peak. She watched teammates travel with kids during that period and saw how difficult it was to juggle recovery, time zones, and limited support.
Now, she says motherhood has changed the way she sees everything from sleep to priorities. “You obviously don’t know until you become a mom how your whole self-being goes out the window, and it’s not about you—which is okay,” she said.
That perspective has also shaped the way she works on set. During the 2025 UEFA Women’s EURO, Lloyd was still breastfeeding and pumping on set while her husband and parents helped care for Harper.
She says the experience gave her a new respect for working mothers. “I just give a huge shout-out to all the moms that have to do it all and have to balance,” she said. “It certainly is a job that really never stops, but it’s the best job in the world.”
Letting Go of Perfection
Lloyd says retirement has made her less guarded. For much of her 17-year professional career, she kept her life private and let her game do the talking.
That changed after retirement, when she and her husband Brian went through unexplained infertility and multiple rounds of IVF treatments before she shared her first pregnancy in an essay for Women’s Health. She said opening up was not the plan, but the weight of soccer was finally gone.
She still wants to improve as a broadcaster, but she is no longer trying to be perfect. “If I mess up on air, I mess up on air,” she said. “I mean, it’s not the worst thing in the world. We’re literally talking about soccer.”
For Lloyd, that easier mindset now reaches every part of life. Whether she is on air, pregnant, or raising Harper, she says the lesson is the same: adapt, react in the moment, and keep moving forward.
