During her final international championship match at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, United States Women’s National Team star Carli Lloyd chose not to kneel during the national anthem alongside her teammates. And now, she’s explaining why.
During that time, kneeling during the national anthem had become commonplace throughout sports as players protested racial inequality. Carli Lloyd herself knelt during the national anthem alongside her teammates on multiple occasions. But ahead of the bronze medal against Australia, she decided not to.
“I just felt like I had done it five other times and I just wanted to stand for this one,” Lloyd said during a recent appearance on CBS Sports’ “Kickin’ It” this week. “That was it, there was like no other thought or anything. … I just thought that we had done enough of the kneeling and I just wanted to stand for my last world championship game.”
By that point, Lloyd saw kneeling during the national anthem as a rather hollow action that was unlikely to spark any real change.
“But I’m in support of change that’s actionable change,” Lloyd said. “And I just felt like it was just like a thing to do. Like it was just beginning to feel like a thing to do. It was an empty stadium, I don’t know how many people were watching the game. It was 10 seconds before, it was not like our team was wearing coats, it was a global thing people were doing.”
The USWNT still allows players to kneel during the national anthem, but no players knelt during the national anthem during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
