When Carli Lloyd scored a hat-trick in a FIFA Women’s World Cup final

Only one player has ever scored a hat-trick in the previous eight FIFA Women’s World Cup finals – and it only took her 16 minutes to do it.

United States legend Carli Lloyd wrote her name into the history books when she scored an astonishing three goals to lead her country to an emphatic 5-2 win over Japan in the 2015 final.

Lloyd’s third goal to complete the hat-trick was out of this world. She lobbed Japan’s goalkeeper from halfway.

It was the first of two World Cups Lloyd would win during a decorated professional career which saw her play more than 300 games and score more than 100 goals for the US.

Ahead of this year’s final between European heavyweights England and Spain, Lloyd took a walk down memory lane and looked back on the greatest day of her career – when she scored a hat-trick in the 2015 final.

So tell us, what is it like to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final?

It’s definitely the number one thing people talk about from my career and for me, it was one of the greatest days of my career and with the team. The way that we went out in 2011, which was heartbreaking, losing on PKs (penalty kicks), and I missed my PK, and then the build up to 2015 and the way we did it, it was truly incredible.

You lost the 2011 final to Japan on penalties after blazing your attempt over the crossbar. How brutal is it to lose in a penalty shootout?

It’s the nature of the beast, unfortunately. We had a shootout in the quarterfinal match against Brazil and we all made them there. I think what makes it hard is teams study your kicks, you start to play mind games with your mind around what spot you’re going to go, what side you’re going to go.

How much did the pain of the defeat in 2011 motivate the team to come back and win in 2015 and 2019?

We felt like that journey we were on, we were meant to win and unfortunately we weren’t. But that just built up things even more for 2015 and you learn to appreciate the failures, although not particularly in the moment. You don’t take the winning moments for granted. It means that much more when you’ve been knocked down and have to get back up again.

After the heartbreak of 2011, how satisfying was it to win in such dominant fashion four years later?

You never know when successful moments will come or how things are going to play out, but I’m a big believer in putting my head down, working as hard as I can, and that was just a moment in time where everything I had put into the sport came to fruition at that moment. We hadn’t won in 16 years. Not to say in 2019 wasn’t special but to have won that first one after 16 years, after 1999, one of the most iconic World Cups, it was amazing.

You scored from the halfway line to complete the hat-trick. What made you attempt such an audacious shot?

I knew their goalkeeper always played off her line. The way Japan played she liked to have the ball at her feet and build out from the back. She was taking a gamble here and there, and throughout my career I’ve always looked and watched where goalkeepers are, how far they’ve come off their line. In that moment where you’re having to process your decision-making so quickly, everything has to be perfect, the touch, the second touch to set myself up and the shot. It was all purposeful. I knew she was off her line, I went for it and it was just struck perfectly.

When did you realise it was going in?

I knew when it came off my foot it had an opportunity to go in it was just dependent on how she would touch it. She touched it, but luckily it snuck in off the post.

You won the World Cup twice during her career. What do you think is the key to winning a World Cup?

You can not start off a World Cup great, but it can end in a totally different way and if teams can find that amongst the challenging situations going on, they are the teams that ultimately win the trophy. We found our groove, the mentality we needed, and the final was probably our least stressful game. There was just a feeling, an aura, in our group that I knew we were going to win.

It felt like you really grew into the 2015 tournament…

I think it was just the journey. We started off pretty rough. Even though we were winning games we weren’t playing at our best, and all the pundits and media didn’t think we would make it out of the group. We had a really tough group; Sweden, Australia and Nigeria and then first knockout round against Colombia we had a few yellow-card suspensions which made Jill [Ellis] change up the lineup and change my role, putting me further up the field and attack is what I do best. It just reignited our team. Kelley O’Hara, I remember her coming in against China and just that fight and that tenacity and never-say-die is what this team is all about, and we just turned a corner at that point and we were all hungry to win.