Fallout from the early exit of the USWNT from the Women’s World Cup continues. The woman who has come away in a positive light from the loss to Sweden is Carli Lloyd the former captain of the USWNT who is doing on-site studio analysis for the tournament on FOX. Even before the survival game against Portugal, Lloyd said the team was complacent and underprepared; then, after one of the players attributed the loss to a video replay call that had a blocked penalty kick only a millimeter over the goal line, this was Lloyd’s commentary:
“No, it was not a millimeter. This was years in the making. This is going to haunt the players. I’ll give them credit in saying that they came out and they played; they played well, they just didn’t score a goal. But you can’t stay complacent and not evolve, and that is exactly what has happened. This is on the players, this is on coach Vlatko Andonovski, U.S. Soccer, that has contributed to this failure and this exit at the World Cup. The team was not prepared, and a lot of these younger players, we’re going to see a new era, and a lot of these younger players, I hope, will use this as a huge learning experience to get better in the future.”
Carli Lloyd was on the USWNT from 2005 until 2021 and she appeared in 316 games over that time period; let there be no question about her “expertise” here; she played soccer at its highest level. In her first chance as a broadcaster, Carli Lloyd is “bringing it”; lots of former players – and former coaches to be sure – soft-pedal any criticisms they might offer but Lloyd is giving viewers exactly what she thinks about a less-than-positive situation. Lloyd took some heat for her bluntness and her lack of empathy – – but that did not stop her.
The FOX team is still covering the tournament and on the air after the dust had settled over the USWNT elimination, Carli Lloyd said:
“They have to take their time, but they also need to quickly figure out what to do with the Olympics looming. Players shouldn’t be involved with this. In the past, players have been involved. I think someone needs to come in, they need to be ruthless, they need to make tough decisions. This is a very, very important decision and a coach should not be friends with the players.”
Regarding the thought that this team was complacent, here is an interesting bit of information I ran across about the USWNT:
- The 2023 USWNT had on its roster eleven of the fifteen highest paid women players in the world and nine of the top ten highest paid women players in the world.
I have no way to know if that data created a sense of complacency or nonchalance, but it is another example to demonstrate that amassing a roster with the highest payroll is not necessarily going to wind up successfully.
I do not know what the broadcasting situation is for the soccer competitions – – men’s and women’s – – in next year’s Olympics, but I sure hope Carli Lloyd is part of the studio team and that she continues to “bring it”.
The other “announcer news” of the moment involves Kevin Brown who is the play-by-play announcer for the Baltimore Orioles. He was suspended earlier this week by the team for remarks he made on the air a couple of weeks ago that highlighted the Orioles’ losing record over the past several years against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Moreover, it is not as if Brown went and dug up arcane stats for his commentary; the stuff he offered to the viewers was taken from the scoreboard information in the Rays’ stadium. It was a simple acknowledgement that for the last several years, the O’s have been dominated by the Rays.
For those of you who are not in the Baltimore/Washington area, Kevin Brown is a very good play-by-play guy. He is young; he is engaging; he is enthusiastic, and he does not drown the audience in verbiage. So, I was glad to see that there was a huge outcry against his suspension and calls from lots of places for him to be back on the air immediately. Orioles’ fans in Camden Yards made their preference known with chants of “Free Kevin Brown! Free Kevin Brown!”
The latest reports say that he will return to the booth on Friday of this week which should placate the fans and at the same time it gives the Orioles’ ownership some degree of face-saving” having Brown sit out about 15 games. As Willy Shakespeare once said:
“All’s well that ends well…”
Finally, since I praised Carli Lloyd for “bringing it” today and since Kevin Brown will be reinstated from suspension for comments that his bosses did not like, let me close today with this example of unmitigated scorn offered up by William F. Buckley, Jr. regarding France and the French people:
“A relatively small and eternally quarrelsome country in Western Europe, fountainhead of rationalist political manias, militarily impotent, historically inglorious during the past century, democratically bankrupt, Communist-infiltrated from top to bottom.”
Other than that …
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
If Sports Curmudgeon were to be forcibly jettisoned from the internet, at least two of us in the crowd would fill the air with chants of “Free Sports Curmudgeon! Free Sports Curmudgeon!”
TenaciousP:
Don’t give people any ideas about banishing me… 😉
So what’s with kicking France and the French today? Buckley, of all people, to call anyone “quarrelsome”…reminds me of the “pot and kettle” analogy.
GRL:
No intention to kick France or the French. Yes, using the word “quarrelsome” with regard to William F, Buckley, Jr. would be perfectly appropriate.
I included that quote simply because I had it on my clipboard and it was sufficiently “over the top” to be a closing remark.
From the time she retired (and even a bit before that) Karli Lloyd has adopted the “nobody has ever worked harder (or even as hard) as I do.” Also nowhere in the postmortem was it noted that the US team had 14 (out of 23) rookie participants a situation necessitated by the fact five previous top line previous participants who would have been starters or significant subs (a list which included the team’s top scorer, and top defender who was also the team captain) were non partcipants due to injury. Circumstances that I feel had a greater impact than the laziness caused by a sense of “entitlement” manufactured by Lloyd.
Jess:
I do not question any of your presentation here. At the same time, my sense was that the USWNT did not play with any sort of “passion” or “focus” or whatever you want to call it in any of its Group Stage games. They were more “energetic” against Sweden and outshot the Swedes significantly, but could not put the ball in the net. It looked to me as if they thought they could turn on the after-burners any time they wanted to – – but when they tried against Sweden there was no ignition.
I am not engaging in mind-reading here because I don’t do that. That is my impression from the games i watched. That impression is much closer to Carli Lloyd’s assessment than something else.