Hope Solo, America’s most celebrated goalkeeper, has posed many a difficult question throughout a career shrouded in controversy.
Questions for opposition strikers. Questions for lawmakers and her befuddled paymasters.
Yet now answers are needed as to what happens next for the 35 year old who has seen, not for the first time, ignominy shroud her sporting achievements.
The announcement that US Soccer had terminated Solo’s national team contract (initially it was a six month ban) following a callous, though heat-of-the-moment and forgivable, outburst after Team USA’s surprise failure to land gold at the Rio Olympics elicited little sympathy from teammates or fans alike.
To call a Swedish team who had defeated the reigning Olympic and World Champions “a bunch of cowards” was harsh, yet interviews conducted soon after brought balance and a sense of perspective.
Sunil Gulati, the head of US Soccer, however brought the axe down swiftly, blathering on about unacceptable attitudes and a failure to maintain the ethos of the much fabled yet feebly maintained Olympic spirit.
Her international career is surely finished and the announcement this weekend of her intentions to take a break from domestic action (she was not banned from playing for her club side in Seattle) have cast huge doubts over what happens next.
Yet the devil was disguised in a shameful background which should have seen Solo seeking a new employer long before this ham-fisted denouement shrouded in lies left observers scratching heads and shrugging shoulders.
Coward-gate , hinted Gulati, was basically the straw which broke the camel’s back. It’s as though Solo has just been given a ban for a lifetime’s worth of misdemeanors.
There’s the assault charge which dates back to 2014 and is yet to be concluded in a court of law. Solo, allegedly drunk and violent, became involved in an altercation with her 14-year-old nephew which saw his head slammed repeatedly on the concrete.
If Hope Solo was a man, her behavior would have gotten her booted from #uSaSoccer years ago. #domesticviolence
— The big house (@TheBigHouse) August 25, 2016
At the time, Gulati’s silence was pathetically deafening as calls to suspend her before the World Cup grew ever louder. The case remains open and the principle of innocent until proven guilty applies here. But you do have to wonder in view of the penalties that have been meted out to male sportsmen whether the retribution taken against her following the domestic violence incident would have been more severe had she been a man.
At the time the grinning suits of US Soccer hailed their glorious goalkeeper. They backed her while making a song and dance about closing in on a clean sheet record.
She was even given the captain’s armband while officials sycophantically swatted away any reservations about her character.
If that wasn’t enough, at the start of 2015, Solo was charged with drunk driving offenses after being found inebriated with her husband in, you’ve guessed it, a US Soccer branded van. The punishment? A one-month ban.
Then there was a tasteless mocking of the Zika virus before heading to the Olympics which also reeked of classlessness.
It’s all beyond parody and in any other sane business, those two strikes should have sent her packing. Yet here’s the rub. Solo was on top of her game. The true number one who went on to help the United States win the World Cup. Cue the emotional garland parade in New York City and the adulation of a nation.
Fast forward a year however and things aren’t the same. Solo’s form has dropped – her performance in the final Olympic group stage match versus Colombia was haphazard — and the team failed to conquer the world.
The US women are at their lowest ebb for a while and, tellingly, remain in the midst of a bitter battle with their employers over the contentious details of their collective bargaining agreement, which has seen legal weight thrown around in the fight to have their demands met.
The fact that Solo, a strong personality and one of the most experienced members of the squad, will now not be involved in these discussions should not be overlooked.
To her credit, she has been a fierce advocate of equal pay for women and has campaigned for much needed upgrades in facilities for the women’s game.
Solo isn’t all bad. Far from it. Yet the overriding feeling of this whole sorry story is one of shameful mismanagement by the sporting authorities.
To effectively announce Solo had been banned for calling a team of Swedish female footballers “cowards” was a lie. It was an open goal. An easy score at the perfect time with the vanquished unable to reproduce the requisite magic of yesteryear.
She’s past her prime so clearly it’s the perfect time to pull the ripcord and banish the threat of more PR nightmares.
The outcome says as much about Solo as it does about the dithering officials who make decisions to save their own faces.
If Hope Solo is getting six months for calling a team “cowards” what does Ryan Lochte get for inciting an international incident?
— Nick Filipowski (@NICK_WKBW) August 25, 2016