When Lloyd left the meeting, she nearly did a dance of joy and relief. Finally, she had the chance to do her thing.

So with Rapinoe in the stands and Wambach on the bench, Lloyd wore the captain’s armband, and that armband turned her superhuman. She and that armband were everywhere. Pushing the ball forward. Stealing it back. Running it down. Grabbing the team by the scruff of its neck and leading it to a win.

“I think that me letting her attack and letting her feel like she could do whatever she wants, I think that helped her,” Brian said of Ellis’s decision to let Lloyd be Lloyd again. “She’s been wanting to bring it and change it around, and I think she did that.”

The insertion of Brian behind Lloyd was surely a critical difference, but the change in the team’s demeanor was drastic. The United States looked more aggressive, and the players pressed harder up the field, seeking the action instead of waiting for it to come to them.

This, we hope Ellis has realized, is how the United States should play if it wants to beat Germany on Tuesday in Montreal.

The transformation came just in time for the team and for Lloyd. A semifinal against top-ranked Germany is not the time for them to be searching for confidence.

Lloyd found hers with a game to spare. But shame on Ellis if she does anything to spoil it, such as reverting to a Wambach-centric attack. She should acknowledge that Lloyd — on the upswing, peaking when it counts — has emerged brilliantly from bearing much of the criticism for the Americans’ lack of creativity in the midfield, for its string of unsatisfying (albeit winning) performances and for its forwards’ inability to create chances and to convert them into goals.