MINNEAPOLIS -- It is going to be a while before Carli Lloyd gets a chance at the mulligan that really matters to her: the chance to sweep World Cup and Olympic titles in successive years. That chance vanished in a haze of penalty kicks on a Brazilian afternoon in August.
But as she stepped away from the U.S. women's national team for a bit, if only to let life beyond soccer intercede long enough to get married next month, a message followed her as she walked off the field: She and the U.S. will be back to work on unfinished business.
A shaky Swiss defense happened to be the unwitting vehicle for the message, as Lloyd's two goals set the United States on the path to a 5-1 comeback win over Switzerland.
Even excluding a 9-0 romp against an overmatched Thailand, the U.S. has scored 12 goals in its other three games since the Olympics. Each of those dozen goals came against teams ranked in the top 20 in the world and preparing for next summer's European Championship.
"You learn from your failures," Lloyd said. "You learn from your losses more than you do from your wins. I think for this team to push on to the next [World Cup and Olympic] cycle -- not that I wouldn't have liked to win a gold medal -- but I think it's good for everybody. Coaching staff, players, we need more will, desire. I think that's really what it's all about."
That's especially true if intangible desire translates to a tangibly more productive team in the final third.
Few will mistake this city across a river from Minnesota's state capital for Brasilia, Brazil's capital. But on more than one occasion the past few days, locals generally aware the U.S. women were in town but hazy on the specifics confused Switzerland with Sweden, the team that eliminated the U.S. from the Olympics in Brasilia. The confusion proved prophetic.
It took just seven minutes for Switzerland to take the lead off a counter similar to that which Sweden used to take a lead in the Olympics. The Swiss then dropped into a defensive shell, like the Swedes before them, and this half of the Twin Cities served up a healthy dose of déjá vu.
The cause of the deficit was admittedly different. The lineup for the U.S. on Sunday included just six of the same players as the Olympic quarterfinal. Even more consequentially, for the second game in a row, the Americans played out of a 3-5-2 formation, a departure defensively from their past bread and butter.
The goal demonstrated all the perils of such a strategy, with the back three of Becky Sauerbrunn, converted midfielder Allie Long and national team rookie Casey Short pulled out of shape by the Swiss counter attack. Goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris stopped the first shot, but no one could prevent Sandrine Mauron from scoring the rebound for a 1-0 lead.
"It's unfortunate [that] the way we were going to get exposed in a three-back was kind of how it happened," Sauerbrunn said. "We all had to shift over to one side of the field, which left the weak side, which was my side, very open. It was kind of a team breakdown."
After Sweden struck first in the Olympics, the United States had 59 minutes -- the final 29 of regulation and 30 more in overtime -- to turn its overwhelming possession into two goals and a win. The Americans, of course, managed only one goal and then faced the lottery of penalty kicks.
This time, Lloyd pulled the U.S. level in the 25th minute, turning after some nifty interplay with Andi Sullivan and Kelley O'Hara and blasting a shot from 27 yards past the goalkeeper. She then put her team ahead to stay in the 51st minute, first playing in Christen Press with a nice pass from deep in midfield and then following the play to line up and finish Press' deflected shot.
The floodgates opened, and the U.S. soon added three more goals: one from Press, one from Crystal Dunn and one from Kealia Ohai 48 seconds after she made her national team debut, which broke by one second the mark teammate Lynn Williams set days earlier against Switzerland in Utah.
But look again at the timing of Lloyd's goals: two within 44 minutes of going behind. That's good enough to have escaped Brasilia in a parallel universe.
Among the ways Hope Solo erred in her now infamous comments after the Olympic exit was that in calling Sweden cowards, she left the impression that what the Swedish team did that day was easy, that any team could do it, but most weren't willing to sink to such supposed moral depths. The Swiss proved otherwise. The stakes were obviously different, but they weren't nearly as committed to the cause as Sweden. It was a lackluster and disjointed defensive effort.
But it wasn't just bad defense. The U.S. was better able to pick apart a compact defense than with a barrage of hopeful shots against Sweden. Against the Swiss, rookies Williams and Sullivan excelled for the second game in a row. The defensive alignment that tested the back line also gave the U.S. better numbers with which to attack in the middle of the field.
"What I was really impressed with today was our ball movement in the final third," Ellis said. "I thought just a lot of combinations, we created a lot of chances. I thought the personnel in there today gave us a lot of types of options. I thought Carli was superb in the pocket, in terms of coming off and playing final passes. I thought our forwards did a great job of holding it up. In the final third, when a team sits and defends as well as they do or sits that low, you've got to have really good movement on and off the ball."
No one was a more active part of that than Lloyd, who began the game as one of two forwards but soon settled in as the attacking midfielder behind forwards. Whether combining with Sullivan behind her or playing in balls to Williams, Press and Dunn, she exerted an influence on the game worthy of FIFA's player of the year.
It has been an eventful year for Lloyd, to say the least. While adjusting to the newfound fame that came with her starring role in the 2015 World Cup, she began by inheriting the role of co-captain from Christie Rampone and Abby Wambach. That was no honorary title when a spokesperson was needed to address a wide range of issues. The year also included a knee injury that left her racing the clock to be at full speed for the Olympics. Lloyd has navigated all of that, plus the not inconsequential matter of a wedding.
Through it all, she scored 17 goals -- one shy of her magical 2015 total.
"It's probably been one of the most challenging years she's ever had, in terms of a lot of off-the-field stuff," Ellis said. "In terms of her form, I think the qualifying, there were some goals to be had there. And I think in retrospect, the longer layoff going into the Olympics, it's hard for a player to hit their form when they've not been playing games. But I think she's just given us a great visual of what she can do."
She will do it amidst open competition for playing time that looks all the more intriguing after Williams, Sullivan and Short, in particular, seized the opportunity of their first call-ups and looked ready to stick around for some time. Lloyd might also do so playing in a system that, if nothing else, made largely inconsequential friendlies endlessly intriguing.
The U.S. is changing, but let's be clear: It is changing around Lloyd.
"For me, 2016 was good," Lloyd said. "Could I have been better? Absolutely. I think everybody can always be better than they think they were. But now it's about getting married and taking a little time off and rebuilding and getting after it again."
To those thinking the Swedes offered a blueprint of how to undo Lloyd and the Americans: Well, you better be able to follow that plan a good bit better than the Swiss did Sunday.