Lloyd is dedicated as hell, a hard worker, and talented. Wambach did, with a different perspective, which is fascinating for someone like me. Lloyd also discusses some of the same incidents that Ms.

It has much more soccer in it than Abbi Wambach’s memoir from earlier this year, and I loved that. The book follows her journey from player in her New Jersey hometown, through college, and into her professional career. Lloyd, and I haven’t seen her interviewed much, but the voice, while a bit stiff, feels genuine.

Of the memoirs I’ve read recently that involve a co-writer, this one reads the smoothest. She’s been playing for the US Women’s National Team since the early 2000s, but she stepped hard into the spotlight during the World Cup in Canada last year, when she scored three times in the final win over Japan, including a shot basically from mid-field. If you aren’t a fan of women’s soccer (and if you enjoy sports, you should check it out), you probably hadn’t heard of Carli Lloyd before last summer. I’m surprised my local book store didn’t just automatically set it aside for me. This candid reflection on a remarkable turnaround will take readers inside the women's national team and inside the head of an athlete who willed herself to perform at the highest levels of competition.Ī memoir. Despite all the naysayers, the times she was benched, moments when her self-confidence took a nosedive, she succeeded in becoming one of the best players in the world. And no one believed in her more than James. Together they set to work, training day and night, fighting, grinding it out. What Carli lacked were fitness, mental toughness, and character. Then she found a trusted trainer, James Galanis, who saw in Carli a player with raw talent, skill, and a great dedication to the game. In 2003 she was struggling, her soccer career at a crossroads.

It featured a gutsy, brilliant performance by team captain and midfielder Carli Lloyd, who made history that day, scoring a hat trick-three goals in one game-during the first sixteen minutes.īut there was a time when Carli almost quit the sport. Women’s National Soccer Team won its first FIFA championship in sixteen years, culminating in an epic final game that electrified soccer fans around the world. soccer history, a shot so audacious that it's surprising to learn that Lloyd had actually practiced it for years with Galanis on an empty field in New Jersey, far from any crowds.” – Grant Wahl, Sports Illustrated Or topping off that hat trick with an astonishing fifty-yard strike from midfield, the greatest goal in U.S. Like scoring a hat trick in the first sixteen minutes of a World Cup final, an eventual 5–2 victory over Japan. “If a player trains when nobody is watching, she might be able to do superhuman things when the entire world is watching. Women’s National Soccer Team, an inspiring, uplifting, and candid memoir of how she got there.

When Nobody Was Watching by Carli Lloyd