U.S. men’s national team coach Gregg Berhalter recently exposed the team’s frustrations with midfielder Gio Reyna in the lead-up to the World Cup.
Former USWNT star Carli Lloyd feels Reyna’s pain, she said Monday on Twitter.
Reyna, 20, did not start any of the USMNT’s matches at the tournament in Qatar, though he did play the entire second half of their loss to the Netherlands in the Round of 16.
Without naming the player, Berhalter called out Reyna’s lack of effort before and during the tournament at a conference in New York last Tuesday, though he also noted the issue had been resolved. Reyna took umbrage at the comments.
“It is my belief that things that happen in a team setting ought to remain private,” Reyna wrote Monday on Instagram.
In response to Reyna’s situation, Lloyd recalled her own struggle with USWNT staff toward the end of her 17-year career on the squad.
“I was told for three years 2017-2019 I won’t ever start no matter what I did on the field,” she tweeted.
Lloyd started 22 games in that three-year span. She appeared in 56 of the USWNT’s 60 matches.
Always more to it. Kinda like I was told for 3 years 2017-2019 I won’t ever start no matter what I did on the field. And then feed the media the BS narrative that I’m too old. https://t.co/fKHMLYDwco
— Carli Lloyd (@CarliLloyd) December 12, 2022
Since her retirement from soccer in 2021, Lloyd has not shied away from criticism of the USWNT. In March, she called the culture of the team in the last few years of her career “the worst I had ever seen it.”
“It was really tough and challenging to play these last several years. To be quite honest, I hated it,” she said on former USWNT goalkeeper Hope Solo’s podcast.
After the team lost a third straight game in November, marking the program’s longest losing streak since 1993, she said the winning culture “has been fizzling away.”
“I said it when I retired,” she continued. “I saw it slipping away. Players have to embody that. That’s been our DNA since the ’80s, but not so much anymore.”
