Carli Lloyd’s opportunity for a glorified homecoming drifted 🐎far from the storybook ending she would have wanted.
Entering in the 73rd minute to the loudest cheers heard all day f꧋rom the crowd at Red Bull Arena, Lloyd didn’t have the impact at center midfield that was needed from her as the United States women’s national team held on for a 1-1 draw with France o♕n Sunday afternoon in its second game of the SheBelieves Cup. After a 1-0 win over Germany in the opening round Thursday, the U.S. remains in contention for its second title in the third-annual, four-team, round-robin tournament.
Lloyd, who abruptly left the stadium without speaking to the media, will have to earn her way back into the start♕ing mid🍸field role after coach Jill Ellis replaced her Sunday with a finally healthy Morgan Brian.
“My big takeaway is at some point, we ran out of legs,” Ellis said of the midfield p🦩lay, anchored by Brian and Andi Sullivan, before giving way to Lloyd and Savannah McCaskill in the ꦕsecond half.
“I think [Brian] is working her way back in, but I think she battled. Today, there were spurts where it was some really good play through ou🐽r midfield and, at times, it sputtered. … Overall, it was too many turnovers.”
The U.S. got on the board first when 19-year-old forwardꦺ Mallory Pugh, while falling backward, fired a shot into the low right corner off a rebound in the 35th minute. Pugh leads the team with three goals in 2018.
Bu📖t the Americans’ momentum was short-lived.🐓 Three minutes later, France’s Eugenie Le Sommer beat U.S. defender Abby Dahlkemper on a pass over the top and shed keeper Alyssa Naeher before burying the ball inside the far post.
The game was Lloyd’s first in her home state of New Jersey after being traded in January from the Houston Dash to Sky Blue FC of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). It’s a move Lloyd, 35, ♛has been eyeing for a while now. With just one more World Cup (2019) and Olympic (2020) cycle in her plans before she wraps up her illustrious career, Lloyd said she wanted to begin a new chapter with her husband of two years, Brian Hollins, in Mount Laurel, N.J.
“She’s been with Brian𒐪 since 🤡they were 15 years old and for the last 15 years, she’s been on the road for the majority of the year, so she’s never really had a chance to be home and stay home and live a normal life kind of a thing,” James Galanis, Lloyd’s personal coach and mentor since she was 20, told The Post.
“She’s always wanted it a🌸nd we were able to fast-forward it a little bit, at least a couple of years before she retires.”
Joining Sky Blue, whicꦰh play their ga𒊎mes at Rutgers, also gives Lloyd a chance to make further amends with her family, who kicked her out of the house in 2008 over arguments related to her budding soccer career.
“There’s communication there and things have progressed,” Galanis said. “I’m no🅘t sure whether that played a factor into her coming back home, but there is improvement there.”
Lloyd,ꦚ the two-time FIFA World Player of the Year, has welcomed her new role with the national team on the back end of her career. A natural “leader by example,” as Ellis referred to her, Lloyd has agreed to step in wherever the team needs her, w൲hile still leaving room for more personal fireworks.
“The team is going through a transition. The coach has brought ༺in a lot of young players that she wants to block for the future,” Galanis said. “Carli’s there as a leader, as a role model, as somebody that is mentoring 🅘these young players behind the scenes.
“But I can tell you this, she’s 𝔉in the best shape she’s ever been in her life right now.”
U.S. Soccer honored the United States gold medal-winning women’s hockey team at halftime of Sunday’s game. The team is in the middle of a national tour after avenging its previous Olympic losses to Canada and earning a 4-3 shootout victory at the Wint🎉er Games in Pyeongchang.
It was the United States’ first g⛄old medal since 1998, when women’s hockey made its Olympic debut in Nagano, Japan.