Carli Lloyd’s thoughts on USMNT in World Cup
2x World Cup champion Carli Lloyd shares her thoughts on Mauricio Pochettino and the USMNT’s amazing run in this years World Cup.
Sports Seriously
Soccer legend Carli Lloyd knows what it takes to win the World Cup. The National Soccer Hall of Famer helped the U.S. women’s national team to two World Cup titles in 2015 and 2019, respectively.
Lloyd believes the U.S. men’s national team has a good shot at ending its title drought as it heads into the Round of 16 against Belgium on Monday, July 6 (8 p.m. ET, Fox).
“You have to believe,” Lloyd told USA TODAY Sports. “There’s been a lot of question marks… prior to the tournament and everything’s been coming together perfectly for them, which has been great to see… Anything is possible. Like (USMNT head coach Mauricio) Pochettino says, ‘Why not us? It won’t be an easy next match, but anything is possible.”
Lloyd spoke to USA TODAY Sports through her partnership with Verizon Small Business Super Pitch, where she’ll serve as a headline judge during the final round on July 17, days before the 2026 FIFA World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. She wouldn’t be surprised if the USMNT land in the final.
“It’s not just the results that this team has gotten done, but they’ve really won over the American fan base,” Lloyd added. “The American fan base has fallen in love with this team because of the way that they’re playing, because of the grit, the heart, the determination, the way in which they’re finding ways to win every single game.”
The Americans will have leading scorer Folarin Balogun in the lineup as they vie for their first quarterfinals bid since 2002. Balogun received a red card in the USMNT’s Round of 32 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday, July 1, triggering an automatic one-game suspension that FIFA initially upheld. However, the governing body of soccer reversed course and suspended Balogun’s suspension for one year.
Lloyd said Balogun’s red card “was a very harsh call,” adding the contact warranted “maybe a yellow card at most,” especially when a red card and subsequent suspension could be “the difference between making it through a round and not making it through a round.”
“You can see Balogun not even intentionally trying to land on the player’s ankle. I think that that makes it really difficult. When you do slow things down, things always look a lot worse than what they really are. So yeah, we didn’t think that it warranted a red card,” said Lloyd, who serves on FOX Sports’ broadcast team alongside Clint Dempsey and Alexi Lalas.
However, Lloyd said the timing of FIFA’s controversial decision to suspend Balogun’s red card is “very bizarre.”
“This is a little worrisome for me because this Belgian side has not been that great in this World Cup. You don’t need to give a team any extra motivation to want to beat a team. And that is my concern a little bit,” Lloyd said on the FOX broadcast on Monday. “I think the US can handle that pressure. They’ve handled it up to this point perfectly well. But now there’s an unfortunate circumstance surrounding this amazing U.S. team and what they’ve done. Balogun now has a bullseye on him. If I was a Belgian player, I wouldn’t want to give him a sniff on goal. I wouldn’t want to see him try to score. I wouldn’t want to see the team do well.”
Carli Lloyd on the consistency of referees in the World Cup
USAT’s Cydney Henderson asks 2x World Cup Champion Carli Lloyd about how consistent the officiating has been in this years World Cup.
Sports Seriously
Lloyd said she believes officiating hasn’t been consistent throughout the tournament and said the use of the VAR (video assistant referee) system honest take into accounted flow of the game, which is critical to certain calls.
“What’s making it difficult is these referees are tasked with not only reffing the game, but then also having this VAR system where maybe they do second guess some things or maybe they are a bit more reliant on that than feeling the game and the flow of the game,” Lloyd told USA TODAY Sports. “I think there’s been some tough decisions that have definitely been called this World Cup … I’m very curious to see at the end of the tournament what the review will be like, if there will be some things where they may want to change, may want to implement different things.”
Lloyd won the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup with the USWNT and was named the FIFA Player of the Year in 2015 and 2016. She also scored game-winning goals to secure gold at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. She also won bronze with Team USA at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
Reach USA TODAY National Women’s Sports Reporter Cydney Henderson at chenderson@gannett.com and follow her on X at @CydHenderson.
The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.
