Carli Lloyd was voted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame as a member of the class of 2025, the organization announced on Tuesday. It’s an honor she has earned through two World Cup titles, scoring two gold-medal-winning goals in two Olympics and several individual awards earned during her decade-long career.
Lloyd is one of three players selected off the list of finalists, which included Yael Averbuch, Lori Chalupny, Stephanie Cox, Cat Whitehill and Amy Rodriguez. The induction ceremony will be held next year on May 3 in Frisco, Texas.
One of the finest moments in Lloyd’s career came at the 2015 World Cup when her hat-trick in the final against Japan earned the U.S. women’s national team its third World Cup. Her USWNT senior team career spanned 16 years and 316 caps (second only to Kristine Lilly), helping them win two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals and an Olympic bronze medal. She won the FIFA Golden Ball for the 2015 World Cup, was named FIFA’s player of the year in 2015 and 2016 (when the award was renamed as The Best) and has been included in various world best XIs.
Given her long list of accomplishments, there was never a question Lloyd would carry the day in voting. While her club accomplishments haven’t always kept pace — playing several seasons for the underperforming Houston Dash in the NWSL didn’t help — her national team accomplishments are more than enough to dazzle even the most jaded voter.
Lloyd, along with former USMNT goalkeeper Nick Rimando, earned the player induction as one of two players listed on at least 50 percent of the ballots. Lloyd was on 47 ballots, with 97.9 percent of the votes.
The only question was whether it would happen on a player or a veteran ballot, which is for players who have been retired for more than 10 full calendar years. With only three spots for players and a 20-person ballot that includes both men and women, sometimes those who should be shoe-ins find themselves delayed a few years.
Retiring in 2021, Lloyd officially became eligible for the player ballot in 2024 after being out of the game for at least three full calendar years, as well as having played at least 20 full international games and at least five seasons in a first division league. It’s yet another testament to her resume that she was voted in during her first year of eligibility.
Lloyd, who has created a somewhat contentious public persona both as a player and now as a commentator, said in 2021 during her retirement tour that “everybody was trying to drag me down.”
“I don’t know if it was sort of the Kobe or Jordan thing where, in my mind, I had these nemeses and I just created these storylines in my head where I just wanted to stick it to people,” Lloyd told The Athletic back then. “There’s probably a little bit of that, but I think there’s some truth, as well. But I look back and I’m like, ‘I thought all of these people hated me. I thought everyone had so many bad things to say about me.’ Now, I’ve announced my retirement and I’m just shocked. There’s all this support I’ve received.’”
The controversy usually came due to off-field issues both during and after her career, such as calling Megan Rapinoe kneeling to protest police brutality against Black Americans a “distraction” or saying USWNT players shouldn’t have smiled and danced after managing to advance from the group stage of the 2023 World Cup.
By her own account, being cut from the USWNT under-21 team in 2003, because the coach perceived she wasn’t working hard enough, flipped a switch. Lloyd vowed she would never get dropped again over hard work. Much of her career, at least as publicly discussed, has been motivated by proving criticism wrong. She detailed much of this journey in her autobiography When Nobody Was Watching, discussing her single-minded pursuit of winning, though at times it cost her some of her closest familial relationships — a rift she eventually mended in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
There’s never been any denying that Lloyd was a force on the field. She could be a battering ram of a 10, and her dedication to staying healthy and fit is honestly instructive given how long she played with few major gaps in her availability.
Again, the Hall of Fame’s criteria is about accomplishment, and Lloyd has oodles of that with more to spare. There’s no doubt she should be in the class of 2025, nor should it be a surprise that she went through in her first year.
(Top photo: Robert Cianflone / FIFA via Getty Images)
