Sundhage coached the United States from 2007-2012, leading the team to the gold medal at Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012, and to the final of the 2011 World Cup.
Advertisement
Alex Morgan had her spot kick saved and Christen Press missed the net entirely, as the U.S. Women’s National Team suffered a shock penalty shootout loss to Sweden in the Olympic quarterfinals.
Sports Illustrated reporter Grant Wahl tweeted out Solo’s full statement after the 1-1 draw that ended with a 4-3 shootout victory for Sweden.
Extra time saw much more open, end-to-end play as the US were sending numbers to find a victor, hoping to avoid having to go into a penalty shootout. “I didn’t even anticipate it going into penalties”, said Morgan, who scored the lone goal for the Americans but missed in the shootout. “But it just wasn’t our day”.
Sweden heads into a semifinal match against host Brazil in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday. The local fans are still upset about her posts on social media about the Zika virus.
“You saw us give everything that we had today”.
We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership.
No one will deny that Hope Solo is possibly the best women’s goalkeeper to have ever played to date. “But we also played a bunch of cowards”, Solo said.
Solo complained of a head injury but would not allow police officers to examine her. Sgt. Phil Goguen, one of the officers on the scene said in a report that “When (Solo) spoke, her speech was slurred and I could smell the odor of intoxicating liquor on her breath”. “I strongly and firmly believe that”. She didn’t come out and blame the U.S. team for scoring on her.
“I thought we played a courageous game”.
The U.S. came out early with intent and in the 4th minute, they fired a warning signal, Carli Lloyd with a attractive pass that doesn’t quite reach the wings but comes out for a corner.
Friday’s victory moves Sweden onto the semifinals, where they will face the victor of Friday night’s quarterfinal match between Brazil and Australia.
Later, Solo went to Twitter with a mea culpa of sorts: “Losing sucks”. I was really optimistic. It was the earliest loss for the USA women’s soccer team at an Olympics tournament.
She has admitted to appearing drunk on NBC’s “Today Show” after the US won the gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
More hardware for Phelps, Ledecky and more: Leave it to these Games to give us another tie for a medal, with two archrivals no less.
With Anthony Ervin winning the men’s 50 freestyle and Maya DiRado taking gold in the women’s 200 backstroke, the Americans would have had a clean sweep were it not for the silver by Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history. Christen Press took the fifth U.S. penalty and sailed hers well over the crossbar when a strike would have put the Americans at advantage. Next up was Sweden’s Lotta Schelin who scored when she shot left and Solo guessed right. While going 2-0-1 during group play, US players seemed perplexed why they were so slow to move the ball out of the back and through the midfield.
Advertisement
Part of the reason this is coming out so late after the game is because, if by some miracle, you avoided hearing about this result and were able to get home and watch the game, I didn’t want to ruin it for you.
