Carli Lloyd ‘had enough’ of USWNT kneeling at Olympics

It’s been two years since her final international championship match, but Carli Lloyd is now telling the world why she didn’t kneel with her teammates during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Lloyd made headlines at the Summer Games — which were moved to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic — when she did not kneel with the U.S. Women’s National Team before its bronze-medal winning game against Australia.

The former USWNT star joined CBS Sports’ “Kickin’ It” this week and delved into why she decided not to kneel, which became commonplace in sports to protest racism in the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020.

She said she said the action of kneeling felt like it was just “beginning to feel like a thing to do” and didn’t change much in the grand scheme of things.

Lloyd said that with this being her last medal game, she just decided that she wanted to stand in the moments before kickoff.

She said she had kneeled before the other games in the tournament and wanted to be on her feet for this moment.

“I just felt like I had done it five other times and I just wanted to stand for this one,” Lloyd said when asked by host Kate Abdo.

“That was it, there was like no other thought or anything. … I just thought that we had done enough of the kneeling and I just wanted to stand for my last world championship game.”

When asked if she felt comfortable with what the kneeling was there to represent and protest, Lloyd said she did but added “there is no perfect nation” and that she views every person “as a human being.”

However, Lloyd noted that people have different viewpoints and some people get vilified if they don’t have a “certain opinion.”

“I think we’ve gotten to a point where if it’s not a certain opinion then other people can’t have their other opinions,” she said.

“It’s kind of contradicting itself. In that moment, I just kind of had enough of kneeling right before the game because we had done it for a whole year or so leading up.”

Maurice Edu, a former U.S. Men’s National Team player, said that in the moment, her not kneeling “dampened” the situation, especially because he said he knew how Lloyd is in support of change.

“But I’m in support of change that’s actionable change,” Lloyd replied.

“And I just felt like it was just like a thing to do. Like it was just beginning to feel like a thing to do. It was an empty stadium, I don’t know how many people were watching the game. It was 10 seconds before, it was not like our team was wearing coats, it was a global thing people were doing.”

When pressed again, Lloyd said she would do things the same way again as she was honed in on winning a medal.

The U.S. did indeed do that in a 4-3 win in which Lloyd scored twice.

In her post-playing career, Lloyd has also made headlines for disapproving of her former team, criticizing the USWNT’s effort during the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

She first took the team to task for celebrating a draw with Portugal and then continued to call out the U.S. following its early exit from the World Cup.

“I think there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance, and I just saw this team go in a direction where the values that were built and instilled in this team is not what was displayed out at this World Cup,” she told The Athletic after the team lost.