Former U.S. women’s national team forward Carli Lloyd said she was “tired of kneeling right before the game” as she decided to stand before the team’s bronze medal game at the pandemic-affected Tokyo Olympics not to kneel with her teammates, and would “probably” do the same decision again.
Lloyd’s comments came in the second part of her interview on Kickin’ It, a new weekly show on CBS Sports Golazo Network hosted by Kate Abdo, Charlie Davies, Maurice Edu and Clint Dempsey, and continue a series of outrageous comments from the player-for-profit Became a broadcaster.
Lloyd was prompted by Abdo to address the decision not to join her teammates in the symbolic anti-racism gesture for that particular game. despite kneeling throughout the tournament and several times leading up to it. She denied that her choice had anything to do with the national anthem, as the kneeling had occurred just seconds before kickoff and not during the anthem, but rather because she had become apathetic to the move.
“We had done it in every game and I knew it would be my last World Cup game so I wanted to stand. The other times I knelt,” she said. “I just felt like I had done it five times before and this time I just wanted to stand. That’s it. There was no other thought or anything.”
Abdo then asked Lloyd if she felt her decision to run on this occasion sent a message to viewers, and despite her previous attempts to downplay her thought process, she seemed to acknowledge the impact it had.
“I’m sure because I was the only one standing and everyone else was kneeling,” Lloyd said. “I just thought we had done enough of kneeling and I just wanted to be in my last World Cup game. … At that moment I was just fed up with kneeling right before the game because we had been doing it for a whole year or so beforehand.”
Lloyd said she doesn’t necessarily disapprove of the anti-racism gesture, arguing that people are over-interpreting her decision not to kneel that day.
“I think people maybe look at things too much,” she said. “You ask me, ‘What was your reason?’ I took a knee five more times and in my last game I was just perfect. I wanted a medal. I just wanted to focus on that.”
That sentiment echoes Lloyd’s feelings after Megan Rapinoe knelt for the anthem for the first time in 2016, shortly after NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick became the first to do so. Lloyd described Rapinoe’s selection as a distraction for the USWNT, saying she acted as an intermediary at times while serving as team captain.
“At the time, there obviously weren’t many other people doing this other than Colin Kaepernick and Megan Rapinoe, and I had conversations with Megan,” she said. “This is not a personal matter. What she’s doing has distracted our team. It distracted other players from playing, and I was also captain at the time, so I said to her, ‘Don’t let that put a dampener on you.’ you’re trying to achieve something with it.’ It was [that] Everything focused on Megan kneeling, and no one talked about the reason behind it, which is what I was getting at. … We were all just tired of it, we were all just talking about her kneeling on the sidelines.”
“It dampened the situation”
The “Kickin’ It” hosts had a chance to respond to Lloyd’s version of events during the episode, with Edu describing how her decision not to kneel left him disappointed in that moment.
“Seeing it happen in that moment, because I know what kind of influence you have, what kind of following you have… I almost felt like it dampened the situation, you know? Or it just felt like humiliation.” “A way that I know was not your intention,” he said. “I know where you stand on a few different issues, but in that moment I remember seeing it and thinking, ‘The hell?'”
Lloyd said she respected Edu’s comment before the interview ended, although the moderators debriefed after she left after a lengthy interview. They focused on the impact of Lloyd’s decision not to kneel, which attracted widespread attention, particularly from the conservative-leaning media in the United States, and “almost felt like it strengthened this group that was like, ‘Yeah, that “We’re not taking a knee because we don’t support this cause,” Abdo said.
Davies said he “got a crystal clear message from her” as to why she decided against kneeling, but remained disappointed by her stance.
“I was just thinking to myself, ‘If you knew that you weren’t taking a knee because you felt tired and you had already been doing it for a month or two and it was your last game, the messages from that would be far more valuable.’ For “The people who don’t agree with changes in the world: would you still do it even if you personally don’t want to take a knee?” he asked. “Think about the people who are oppressed and have to deal with certain problems throughout their lives. This has been going on for generations and you don’t want to go down on your knees?”
Edu doubled down on his earlier comments, arguing that the impact she would have had had she continued to kneel would have been meaningful.
“I think if she had done it one more time it would have had a greater impact and I think it would have been more positive and constructive than the other time,” he said.
Davies agreed.
“What 10 seconds of your life is it to kneel to show that you are with some of your teammates or just support a group of people who are marginalized every day of their lives?” he added. “I think that’s why I was disappointed.”