VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- In the most literal sense, Carli Lloyd scored the goal that got the United States to Sunday's World Cup final against Japan. Her penalty kick wasn't the only goal the team scored in a semifinal against Germany, but it was the only one it needed.
Yet just as most of an iceberg rests below the surface, the ball she drove into the back of the net constituted only a small part of her influence on the journey to the final game.
This World Cup is on the verge of becoming Lloyd's. That is a difficult act to pull off a few days shy of a 33rd birthday.
The team around her looked out of sorts when she looked out of place. It found its rhythm when she found freedom. It offers its most confident message when she speaks.
One of eight players shortlisted by FIFA for the Golden Ball awarded to the tournament's best player -- and joined on the list by teammates Julie Johnston and Megan Rapinoe -- Lloyd will likely become just the second American, along with 1991's Carin Jennings, to win that award, should the United States beat Japan on Sunday.
Lloyd has three times been selected the player of the match in this World Cup. The rest of the American roster has two such distinctions. Lloyd has scored three goals in three knockout games. The rest of her team has scored two.
She is the only American player other than goalkeeper Hope Solo and defenders Johnston, Meghan Klingenberg and Becky Sauerbrunn to play every minute of the tournament.
"She's one of the best players in the world and has been wanting to be in this position her whole life," Abby Wambach said after the United States advanced to the final. "And now she's here and taking advantage of it and actually doing well. So, for me, I couldn't have more respect and couldn't be more proud of Carli because she does all the things that she needs to do off the pitch to make herself the best on [the pitch]."
Wambach's pursuit of a title in her final World Cup was and remains the most compelling individual narrative for this team. Even Lloyd talked about it Friday as a source of motivation.
The tournament shaped up as the final step in Alex Morgan's coronation too, with the 26-year-old superstar a World Cup starter, albeit a few games delayed, for the first time after introducing herself to the wider world four years ago. Solo is, well, Solo, with her athletic brilliance and personal complexity a recipe for headlines.
Lloyd, on the other hand, is the one whose name comes after the "and" in the sentence. She is not an unknown by any means, but she was not the lead in most eyes, either.
"I don't get a lot of press in the States," Lloyd said this past fall during World Cup qualifying. "I don't get a lot of people who have seen me evolve over the years, whether that's marketing, whether that's people just [not] understanding and knowing the game. But I've been getting better each and every day. I think that now people are kind of starting to realize because I feel like I've entered a phase where I'm separating myself from people with my play and what I'm doing out there."
It rarely happens like this in sports, in which memories of players typically improve after age 30.
Lloyd is a matter of months younger than Diana Taurasi and Serena Williams. She is not much older than LeBron James and Aaron Rodgers. In some sense, she is no less accomplished in her chosen profession than those contemporaries are in theirs.
Lloyd has played 201 games for her country, more than all but three players on the current World Cup roster, and she has scored 66 goals in those appearances, with two of them securing Olympic gold medals. She has played in three World Cups, and on Sunday, she will make what for most would be the once-in-a-lifetime start in a World Cup final for the second time.
But while those athletes are, to varying degrees, only tweaking the stories written about each of their legacies, Lloyd is busily rewriting herself into a new role: the lead role.
It was, of course, a change of roles on the field that made her look the part in recent weeks. With her attacking bona fides well established, for both the national team and Western New York Flash and now Houston Dash in the National Women's Soccer League, Lloyd nevertheless began the World Cup paired alongside Lauren Holiday in an arrangement that kept both as close to their own 18-yard box as the opponent's box through the three group games. The line now from the team and, to be fair, also at the time to varying degrees, is that the conservative approach was part of a long-term strategy. Take care of business in the group, then open things up.
Be that as it may, while Lloyd reminded people Friday that she was no stranger to playing a defensive role, it doesn't suit her any more than slapstick suits Meryl Streep.
"It's obviously my natural position to attack, to roam around, to bounce things off the forward, get in behind the back line, shoot," Lloyd said. "That's what I love. It's been great. [Coach] Jill [Ellis] and I have sat down with one another numerous times and looked at film. She's always been in my corner. She told me after the group games, 'You're fine. We're going to get you going.'"
She did get going, and so, in turn, did the team. The symbolism was almost clumsily heavy-handed in the first knockout game against Colombia. Not long after Wambach missed a penalty kick that left the game scoreless, Lloyd converted a kick from the spot to extend the lead to 2-0 and secure the win.
Wambach acknowledged after that she didn't expect to get to take the second penalty -- such is the punishment for missing one. It was also just Lloyd's time, just as someone who started as the team's captain twice in 2014 has already done so three times in this World Cup. It is her time.
"Her getting the Colombia goal, I knew that something would change in her," Wambach said.
The next game brought an even more discernible difference. With Holiday and Rapinoe out of the lineup for the quarterfinal against China because of yellow cards, Lloyd started paired with Morgan Brian in the two central midfield roles. With the rookie both willing and able to sit in the more reserved position, Lloyd pushed forward more and more often. Her header goal, the only score in the 1-0 win, came off a set piece served from some distance, but look back at how the Americans applied pressure during the preceding minutes and left the Chinese stretched enough to give away a free kick.
First Lloyd, playing high, created a clean look for Amy Rodriguez. Retreating back into her own half, she was already back on the attack at full sprint when Kelley O'Hara took a pass where the touch line intersected the midfield line and played Lloyd into the corner. Lloyd beat the Chinese defender to the ball, faked a cross at the end line, dribbled back into play and slid a pass to the charging O'Hara on a sequence that left the Chinese fortunate to deflect the ball out for a corner. Not long after that, Lloyd plucked an attempted clearance out of the air at midfield and was lurking at the top of the 18-yard box when Alex Morgan couldn't quite keep a ball in play in the corner.
The Chinese gave her and the United States room to attack. She took that room from them.
"It looked almost like she was having fun, which is a good thing," Tobin Heath said afterward.
It is sometimes difficult to tell. As Rapinoe put it during qualifying, when it comes to the soccer field, Lloyd smiles when she scores but not too many other times.
By the time the Americans switched formations against Germany, Lloyd was too much for even the world's top-ranked team to handle.
Lloyd has said she almost quit pursuing her national team aspirations when she languished on the fringes of rosters in her early 20s. She is candid about her own contribution to languishing there, acknowledging she coasted on her natural ability for too long around too many coaches who enabled her.
Even as the player her current coach cannot bring herself to rest, she clearly carries with her the long road and sting of losing her starting spot just before the 2012 Olympics. She can be a puzzle, someone who acts with an air of dismissiveness about criticism but also admits proving "doubters" wrong still fuels her competitive fire.
She has both the confidence to do great things and the insecurity to believe she needs to continue proving she can. To tweak a line from someone who knew something about writing a leading role: That way greatness lies.
"I'm not afraid to put it out there that I want to become one of the best players in the world," Lloyd said the past fall. "If you don't have an aim, I kind of wonder, why are you playing? I want to be the best. Whatever I do in life, I want to be at the top. I don't want to be 'Yeah, I was a member of the team.' No, I'm going for the top."
She is 90 minutes from being there -- not just as a member of the team standing at the summit, but also as the player as responsible as any for getting there.