US Soccer said Solo’s conduct ran “counter to the organisation’s principles”.
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In November of 2012, Solo and her then-fiancee, football player, Jerramy Stevens got into a physical altercation which left her with lacerations, another woman in the hospital, and Stevens in jail.
In announcing the ban, US Soccer president Sunil Gulati said Solo’s comments were “unacceptable”.
Solo has been suspended for six months and had her national team contract ripped up after making controversial comments about Sweden’s players at the Rio Olympics.
US Weekly reports she said some rather offensive things about Sweden. In every sport on the planet. It’s all about her persona, and who she is. Portugal didn’t suspend Cristiano Ronaldo after he ripped Iceland.
Solo will receive three months of severance pay after the termination of her contract, but Nichols said Wednesday night that he would file a grievance on her behalf on Thursday morning.
But for Solo to be suspended over criticizing their tactics is just insane. If this ultimately marks the end of Solo’s time with the US women’s national team, the same team that variously developed, depended on, enabled and scolded Solo became the latest entity to be stymied by her.
Hope Solo has for years been the goalkeeper for the usa women’s soccer team and one of the team’s high profile stars. The federation’s exasperation is understandable, but Cowardgate, as it were, is a flimsy final straw for one of the national team’s defining figures.
But it’s also odd how that past includes criticisms of a teammate, aging goalkeeper Briana Scurry, years ago, cavalier tweets about Brazil and Zika.
After an upset loss to Sweden in the Olympic quarterfinals, Solo called her opponents “a bunch of cowards”. Our women’s national team has a most insular culture, has since nearly the beginning, and among its tenets is that everyone stay on message. There was gymnast Gabby Douglas, scolded for simply looking less than excited as other USA gymnasts won individual events and she was reduced to a mere piece of the team, no longer its star. They failed. Yet when the game was lost, nobody paid attention to any of them.
Those who do not fit in, in myriad ways, are weeded out or pushed to the perimeters.
Her ever-expanding list of controversies seemingly began in 2007, two years after she was anointed the starting goalkeeper for the USWNT. Chemistry matters. And 25 years of success after success speaks volumes. That depends on what we want from the team that represents us. Shockingly, Solo picked her fiancee up from jail the next morning and the two were married later that day. She was charming, amusing and the smartest person in the room, and that’s worth emphasizing.
At times, Solo has shown signs of maturity and an awareness that she is more than just an athlete. Armour gave Solo a piece of her mind.
Sweden “parked the bus”, as the English say.
While Hope Solo seems to accept the decision, the player’s union isn’t so much. Kevin McCauley, SB Nation writer, said, “They’re packing 10 players behind the ball and refusing to take any risks when they attack”.
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So one of the best players on the USA team has been booted from the league for the equivalent of more than an entire football season for saying something “offensive”. Was it a case of the federation giving her every chance to get things right and they finally had enough, or was it an easier decision because there are no competitive games to worry about for a while?
