After Fox Sports analyst Carli Lloyd blasted the USWNT for their performance in a 0–0 draw against Portugal to advance out of group play on Tuesday at the Women’s World Cup, coach Vlatko Andonovski did not shy away from firing back at Lloyd’s criticism of the team in the tournament thus far.
In addition to criticizing the USWNT’s postgame celebration after narrowly escaping Portugal, Lloyd also called the team’s performance “lackluster.”
“You never want to take anything for granted,” Lloyd said. “You put on that jersey and you want to give it everything you have, for the people that came before you and the people that are going to come after you, and I’m just not seeing that passion. I’m just seeing a very lackluster, uninspiring, taking-it-for-granted, where winning and training and doing all that you can to be the best possible individual player is not happening.”
After being told of Lloyd’s comments in the postgame, Andonovski called her criticism “insane.”
“The one thing I want to say is that this team wanted to win this game more than anything else,” he began. “They’ve put everything they could in preparation for this tournament and every game that they go into, so to question the mentality of this team, to question the willingness to win, to compete, I think it’s insane. I’ve never seen this team step on the field and not try hard or not compete. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, they can say whatever they want, but I just know how this team feels. It’s not like we played well by any means. We owned it. We know it’s not good enough. We’re not happy with our performance, but we qualified for the next round. We’re moving on.”
The U.S. will play the winner of Group G on Sunday in New Zealand, which is likely to be Sweden.
