All Eyes on U.S.: The U.S. Women's National Team Preps for the World Cup

June 24, 2011

Go behind-the-scenes as Abby Wambach, Carli Lloyd, Hope Solo and the rest of the top-ranked U.S. Women's National Soccer Team prepare for the 2011 FIFA World Cup in Germany.

TRANSCRIPT

Abby Wambach: Well the World Cup preparation is something that is a little different than many other preparations because you have to focus yourself and the focus a year ago was out here and now the focus is getting a little more slimmer and tighter and narrow.

Carli Llyod: We've actually done a ton but it's actually here before we know it and it's gone really fast. We start obviously training after the '08 Olympics so it's been a long road, there's been a lot of people in, our final roster's been named so we can get moving with preparing ourselves even more and going over defensive stuff, set plays, things like that.

Hope Solo: Well it's been quite a run in this preparation for the World Cup. It's been a four year process. Actually it's been a lifelong process as its most of our life long goals to not only make the world cup team but to win a World Cup.

Abby Wambach: This is a combination of many years of preparation and hard work. To be quite honest I'm thrilled that it's here.

Carli Lloyd: It's great that we're ranked number one. I think I would rather have the pressure on Germany, just being in Germany, they have a lot of pressure. I'm kind of going in there as if we're an underdog and not a lot of people are expecting us to do good things.

Abby Wambach: Well I don't look at the number one seed as anyting spectacular or important because the truth is that the number one team will be standing at the top podium at the end of the world cup. I don't care what your ranked going in it's what your ranked going out.

Hope Solo: This team, if you look at the roster, it's kind of funny. It's the oldest team on paper in the previous two World Cups I believe but we definitely have the experience. When you look at the roster there's a lot of young kids as well that have come in and really changed the game for us. They're incredible technical on the ball, they're gifted, they're natural soccer players and for so long they've always brought the best athletes onto the team and we've converted them into soccer players and now finally America is producing true soccer players and it's so incredible to see because they grow up at the young age learning ball skills and they come and just shift into the national team so nicely and bring a different type of atmosphere to the game.

Abby Wambach: I think that we're physically dominant in the air. We can control the game. I think we've got some great headers. Our set pieces are going to be fantastic. We have some players on our team that have the potential to all win the golden boot. We've got so many people on this team that can score goals but more importantly it's just about winning and if we can get points out of the group I think we're going to be alright.

Carli Llyod: Yeah it's a tremendous accomplishment playing in a world championship. This is why you play the sport. I think it's grown so much and the soccer gap between the teams is just closing so much so it's making it more exciting. Whether you're playing Mxico or japan or Italy, it doesn't matter. All these teams are good. They all are good on the ball. They all are getting a lot fitter.

Hope Solo: Is soccer the number one sport here in America? No, not necessarily but the female world cup team is always number one in our hearts, number one on paper and yet when you look at it we haven't had a World Cup victory since 99' and it's time to bring that world cup home. So we take pride in that because we know the fans are behind us.

For more with the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, check out Meet Your U.S. Olypians: Hope Solo