The captain of the US Women’s National Team Lindsey Horan has spoken up for her players amid strong criticisms from former teammate and soccer legend Carli Lloyd. LLoyd, who has since recognized her comments were “extremely harsh”, kicked up a storm on Tuesday after making vehement accusations about the team’s “changing mentality and DNA” following their woeful performance against Portugal.
“I just talked about what the mentality of this team has been about and passed down from generation to generation. But the problem is when you win, and you get things, winning has taken on a different meaning,” said the former USWNT captain after the game.
She questioned the team’s desire- or lack of- to win. “It is no longer we want to win because we want to win. No, we want everything that comes with winning, and we think we can just roll out and win games. And that’s not the case, and teams see that. They see the arrogance in the US and see that they’re not this unstoppable team. They see that they’re able to be broken down and beaten.”
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Despite most players regularly insisting that they don’t stray from the shelter of the basecamp bubble, the remarks did make their way to the USWNT’s dressing room. During Thursday’s press conference, Lindsey Horan emphatically defended her team.
As captain, the number ’10’ clearly felt obliged to speak out: “Yeh, it’s kind of frustrating for me to hear, especially knowing this team and knowing how much we put into every single game, how much preparation we put into every single game, in our training and seeing just generally how hard we work,” she began.
She looked both let down and frustrated by Lloyd’s comments. “In the game, you can’t question that we didn’t want to win it. You can’t question that we weren’t working as hard as we possibly could. We know that things could have been better, we know we that could have done more, we know that we could have done better with the opportunities.”
Horan continued: “Again, it was a good team that we faced. For me, it’s noise and again it’s an opinion and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and we know that’s how it goes. For me, I always want to defend my team and say you have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes, you have no idea in every single training what we’re doing individually and collectively etc. For anyone to question our mentality it hurts a little bit and at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter, I don’t really care… we’re just focused on the next game.”
For anyone to question our mentality it hurts a little bit and at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter, I don’t really care
Horan, who was officially made captain in the weeks leading up to the tournament, insisted that despite their lackluster performances so far, the team is “not panicking.” “As I’ve said before, pressure is a privilege and as the US Women’s team we’re used to that. We’re trying to keep the noise out as much as possible but also use it to our advantage too because we’re going to go out and fight and do everything that we’ve done in the past World Cups to go and win this game.”
After finishing second in the group, the USA take on Sweden in round 16. The group fly to Melbourne on Friday for the crucial clash that takes place on August 8.
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