Photo Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn for USA TODAY Sports
By her own admission, Carli Lloyd never took much time while she was playing to stop and smell the roses. Sometime around 2007, when she was still a fresh face on the United States national team, she was discussing career goals in a meeting with head coach Greg Ryan.
“I remember telling him that I’m striving to be the best player in the world. And I mean it,” Lloyd recalled in a recent conference call with reporters. “That was my individual goal. And my team, collective goal was always to be at my best so I could have helped the team win championships. So that’s what I was striving for.”
For the next 14 years after that, Lloyd often flirted with that lofty status. Last December, a little more than three years after playing her final soccer match, Lloyd welcomed Alexi Lalas to her New Jersey home to conduct an interview. It turned out Lalas was actually there to let her know she has been elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame Class of 2025.
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