I should hang up the boots if I’m OK with playing 10 minutes.” As an athlete, I know I could have made a difference, I know I could have helped. But I also still stuck by my teammates and respected the coach’s decision. “I publicly stated that I should have been out there. “I believe that I didn’t have a shot at ever earning a starting spot from 2017 all the way to 2019,” said Lloyd. Lloyd has made nearly 300 appearances for the national team and scored a hat-trick in the 2015 World Cup final to help the US secure the title but lost her starting job in the run-up to the 2019 tournament. But that’s what made the team great for so many years. Before, you were fighting and clawing your way up. “It is much more of a welcoming environment for them to come into now.

“I tell these young players, ‘you guys have it a bit easier’”, she said. But, like Solo, she said the environment helped toughen her up. Lloyd, who appeared alongside Solo on the podcast, admitted she had been reduced to tears by other players when she first joined the team. I think it creates some softer athletes.” It’s a completely different environment and I don’t think it’s always a good thing. “You cannot push them the same way you used to be able to push a really competitive athlete, somebody like Carli … you have to cater to them. I have a lot of older coaches, close friends of mine in division one soccer, a lot of them don’t know how to coach the younger generations anymore.

They do have the road paved for them a lot of the time. “It is a much more open and welcome environment … it is an easier transition but I also don’t think it helps build character in a lot of these younger athletes. She said that the tough environment on the USWNT was not entirely detrimental. Solo, widely considered one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time, won the last of her 202 caps for the US in 2016. It was really difficult growing up on the national team for me in a social aspect, as well as learning the game,” she said. “People were not nice to us, people were not welcoming, they didn’t invite you to sit at the dinner table. Solo said she felt shunned when she first joined the national team. “We always wanted to change that culture, but ultimately I’m not sure we succeeded.”

Hope solo now