Even going back years, it wasn’t an unusual sight at USA training: the players have finished cooling down and walk to the sideline, but Carli Lloyd is alone on the field, still doing push-ups.

Over the years, she has become accustomed to people laughing at her obsession with hard work, but she has always argued that she’ll take a break when she retires. She has never been shy either about her ambitions to become the greatest player in the world, even if at times throughout her career that seemed a lofty dream.

But now, Lloyd has earned the last laugh. As the new Fifa women’s player of the year, she is the greatest female soccer player in the world after delivering one of the greatest title performances in American sports history.

Her game-crushing, hat-trick in the Women’s World Cup final last summer has been called surreal, but not by Lloyd. Afterward, she told reporters in the press room that she envisioned it while she was doing sprints in training.

The first goal came in just the third minute. In a major oversight, Japan failed on a corner kick to mark Lloyd, who scored the game-winner against the Nadeshiko in the 2012 Olympic final. She raced into the box and tapped the ball in. Two minutes later, the same thing happened again.

But her third, audacious goal is the one that will forever symbolize the pinnacle Lloyd reached in 2015. She cut around a defender, saw the Japanese goalkeeper off her line and launched a shot from the half-way line, a jaw-dropping goal fitting for a World Cup final.

As stunned as the Japanese players were, so too was the record-breaking audience watching the match on TV. Lloyd had produced a performance that is sure to go down in history as one of the greatest ever, almost single-handedly assuring the USA’s eventual 5-2 win.

Though the World Cup final will be her pièce de résistance, the crowning achievement of her relentless work ethic, Lloyd’s impact for the national team had been crucial throughout her career and especially in 2015.

She led the No 1-ranked USA in goals for the year at 18, her career high. It was Lloyd, as the big-goal hunter, who sparked the turning point in the quarter-finals after the USA’s early lackluster performances in the World Cup. Following that performance, she told reporters she would call her longtime trainer, James Galanis, and discuss ways to improve before the semi-final, where she again would score the game-winner and assist the insurance goal.

Lloyd is known as a clutch player, and for good reason. She scored the game-winning goals in both the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, even if her hat-trick at last year’s World Cup will eclipse those. She has a penchant for getting black eyes on the field and delivering crunching tackles.

“I’m just rugged, raw, and I want to win,” said Lloyd at Monday’s award ceremony. “I will do whatever it takes.”

But Lloyd is a complicated sports figure, whose apex in 2015 only came after peaks and valleys in a rollercoaster career. The goal-scoring machine of today was the turnover machine of yesterday. The clutch player of today was the player who choked in 2011, overshooting a penalty in the World Cup final.

Sweden’s Pia Sundhage stirred controversy with comments ahead of the group-stage clash against USA, the team she used to coach, declaring Lloyd a challenge to manage. When the coaches had faith in Lloyd, she played well, Sundhage said, but when doubt crept in, her performance suffered.

As it turns out, perhaps Sundhage’s comments weren’t so off base. For all of Lloyd’s ability, her best self only arrived in Canada when US coach Jill Ellis made a tactical shift that placed Lloyd closer to goal and unburdened her of defensive duties. Ellis had the faith to give Lloyd what she wanted: the freedom to prowl for goals, and that was when Lloyd was unleashed.

Lloyd struggled so much in 2011 that by the time the Olympics came in 2012, Sundhage gave her starting spot to Shannon Boxx. But when Boxx was injured in the opening match of the tournament, Lloyd was forced to take over – and she had perhaps her best tournament up to that point.

The prevailing criticism of Lloyd had always been that if only she were more consistent, she could be a top player in the world. But it’s almost as if the lack of consistency is what has helped her achieve new heights. For her, soccer is a constant act of self-improvement. One of her favorite things to tell reporters over the summer was that she just wanted to prove people wrong.

In 2015, perhaps with memories of her last World Cup lingering, she dominated for her national team while she put her club career on hold. She was the player of the year and no one needed Fifa to make it official.

If Lloyd stays true to her own history, it is a given that there will be periods when she does not resemble a world top player – most likely in off-cycles when her national team is playing friendlies and not tournaments. But she will surely bounce back as she always does.

If not, her legacy as one of the greatest players to ever compete will surely live on anyway, the image of her long-distance goal lingering in the minds of everyone who witnessed her historic performance. Lloyd is a unique, complicated player and over the past 12 months, she was also undoubtedly the best in the world.