Former U.S. women's national soccer team star Carli Lloyd has no regrets about refusing to join her teammates in kneeling for the national anthem during her final international championship match in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics bronze medal game.

"It was right before kickoff," the two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion said in an interview with CBS's Kate Abdo. "So, it wasn't necessarily like a protest, per se."

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"We had done it before every game, and I knew that was going to be my last world championship game. So, I wanted to stand. I'd kneeled all the other times, and, for me, that was just ... I'm playing a game."

Her decision does not appear to be a reflection of what she believed about protesting the anthem. Rather, she had done it so many times before that she just wanted to stand, Lloyd said.

"I'm sure, 'cause I was the only one standing," she said when Abdo asked if her refusal sent a message to those watching around the world. "I just thought that we had done enough of the kneeling, and I just wanted to stand in my last world championship game."

"I think that there is no perfect nation. There's a lot of things that need to be different. There's a lot of more respect that people need to show," the former USWNT captain added. "I've always viewed every single person as a human being, no matter what you look like, no matter who you are, no matter what you represent."

Everyone is entitled to have a different opinion, but a point has been reached where "if it's not a certain opinion, then other people can't have their other opinions. So, it's kind of contradicting itself ... in that moment I was like, I just had enough of kneeling right before the game."

Former U.S. men's national team players Clint Dempsey and Maurice Edu were on the CBS panel, and the latter said that Lloyd's refusal to kneel felt "like a slight in a way."

"I'm in support [of] change, of actionable change," Lloyd responded. "I just felt like it was just a thing to do. It was just beginning to feel like a thing to do. It was an empty stadium. I don't know how many people were watching the game, like it was 10 seconds before. It wasn't like our team was wearing coats. ... It was a global thing that people were doing."

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Abdo asked if Lloyd would do the same thing again, and the former athlete did not waiver.

"Probably," she said. "I think that people maybe look into things too much. You're asking me what was [the] reason? I kneeled five other times, and my last game I was honed in. I wanted a medal. I wanted to just focus on that."