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DEL.ICIO.USHope Solo, U.S. women look for redemption
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Beijing — It was clear by the time Pia Sundhage took over as head coach of the U.S. women’s soccer program that the team had come a long way since its Olympic debut in Atlanta.
They had devolved from smiles and gold medals and inspiring little girls to dropkick their Easy-Bake Ovens to a relatively miserable, sniping existence that led to teammates ostracizing their goalie. Such transitions from joy to drama queens tend to be reserved for instant-messaging 13-year-olds.
“I will say this,” said Sundhage, a former star soccer player and coach in her native Sweden. “It would have been more difficult for me to come in and make changes if everything was fine and the team had won the World Cup. But I think they were ready for a new approach.”
So she sang.
Against the backdrop of a stunning U.S. exit from the World Cup - goalie Hope Solo verbally backhanded her coach in an interview after being benched and created perhaps the greatest female athletic drama since a kneecapped figure skater - Sundhage sang to her players in the first team meeting.
She chose Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” to get across a message.
“I started laughing,” defender Kate Markgraf said.
Hey, that’s a start.
The U.S. women have reached the championship game for the fourth straight Olympics. Their résumé includes two golds, one silver and a highly improbable return to today’s final against Brazil.
The roster is devoid of familiar names (Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy). The team’s best player, Abby Wambach, suffered a broken leg in an exhibition against Brazil last month. Solo, back as the starting goalie, wasn’t even sure she wanted to play soccer again — and certainly didn’t know if anybody wanted her back. But they’re here.
The team allowed a goal 63 seconds into the Olympics and lost to Norway 2-0. But four straight wins have followed and the Americans ironically now face the team Solo never got a chance to play in the World Cup last year. Then-coach Greg Ryan started goalie Briana Scurry (a member of three previous Olympic teams) over Solo (who had been the starter and was coming off three straight shutouts), leading to so much wreckage.
Brazil won 4-0. Solo went ballistic. If she had merely ripped Ryan after the game, few would’ve had a problem. Instead, a 28-second TV interview included shots at Scurry, notably: “I would’ve made those saves,” and, “It doesn’t matter what somebody did in an Olympic gold-medal game three years ago.”
Ryan’s blunder suddenly moved to the background. Solo basically was blackballed. She was told not to come around for team meals or the bronze-medal game. She wasn’t on the team flight from Shanghai.
Ryan was out of a job three months later, but Solo was still deeply depressed. Shortly before the Games, her father died suddenly of heart failure. A close friend was killed in a car accident. Soccer was her refuge until Ryan’s benching.
“I didn’t think I was coming back,” she said following practice Wednesday. “I didn’t think I’d be here. That’s where I find my pleasure today.”
She eventually apologized. Teammates eventually accepted her. Sundhage, the needed fresh voice from the outside, suggested everybody move forward.
“If we didn’t forgive her,” Heather O’Reilly said, “we would be doing the same amount of injustice that some people think she did to us.”
Solo credited Sundhage for healing wounds. “We needed that outside source to come in and shake things up a little bit and give us a new mind-set about everything.
There’s no time to dwell on the past. She came in with this aura of confidence.”
Asked what she had learned since that evening 11 months ago, Solo said, “With every hardship, you learn a lot. I’ve learned a lot about my closest friends and family members and how you really need them in toughest times. I learned a lot about myself, my teammates, about what to say and what not to say, about emotions. I feel better and stronger and more equipped to handle anything in my life.”
Today’s game has several storylines, she said. What’s hers?
“Whether it’s a player or a team, everybody likes a redemption story,” she said.
Permalink | Comments (18) | Post your comment | Categories: Beijing Olympics
Comments
By Ken Stallings
August 20, 2008 10:56 PM | Link to this
Lost amid all the “she shouldn’t have said this” mantra, is the simple fact that Solo was right. She was as hot as a goalie can get and to bench her ranks as one of the stupidest blunders in coaching history. It revealed a coach enamored with himself.
Her statements about her backup’s performance were equally right. Solo likely would have made those saves.
In the end, the right person is on the team and the right person is forever off it!
By Bob Sacamano
August 21, 2008 12:16 AM | Link to this
I’m with Ken.
If this was a guy saying these things, we’d all be praising his cajones to speak the unpopular truth about an idiot coach and a popular, although over-the-hill former star player.
But it is the deep-seeded misogynistic view of our society from men, and also the plain fact that women don’t need much of a reason to turn on another woman, that led to Solo being ostracized from anything.
She had every right in the world to say what she did.
Maybe it hurt her teammates so much because they knew it was true, as well. Scurry obviously knew it was true, because she didn’t say anything.
What was really screwed up, and was probably a lot of the impetus for Solo saying what she did, is why didn’t a single member of the team, who benefitted from Solo’s outstanding play and 3 straight shut-outs, not say a damn thing when she was so stupidly benched by the idiot coach?
Where were her teammates when she needed them?
They didn’t say a damn thing to support her. And that was wrong, and more than likely hurt Solo more than anything Solo said later could have hurt them.
But no one wants to talk about how cowardly all of the other women were to not stand up and support Solo in the face of a momentously stupid decision.
They deserved to lose that game the way they did. Because in soccer, a 4-0 loss is like a 40-0 blowout loss in football. Think LSU vs. VATech last year.
Solo was right, and she was so right in what she said, she was ostracized by the same cowardly women who refused to come to her defense against the idiot decision of an idiot coach. How does that make sense?
By JSS
August 21, 2008 6:59 AM | Link to this
“Misogynistic view of our society”
This from a so-called sports columnist who on March 26, 2006 spent a whole paragraph degrading the physical looks of a group college age female cheerleaders!!!
You people are rich, and Jeff Schultz is a no talent hack!!! Hypocrite!!!
By DBC
August 21, 2008 10:20 AM | Link to this
None of you were there inside the practices or locker rooms of this or any other team sport, so you are making judgements based on limited information. What a bunch of judgemental, selfrighteous armchair quarterbacks!
By Sarcasticus
August 21, 2008 10:30 AM | Link to this
“But it is the deep-seeded misogynistic view of our society from men, and also the plain fact that women don’t need much of a reason to turn on another woman, that led to Solo being ostracized from anything.”
Gee Bob are you some kind of pre-eminent socio-psychologist? Golly Gee!
She may have made a correct assessment of the situation, but it was not up to her to do it in a public forum and drag the team down further.
“benefitted from Solo’s outstanding play and 3 straight shut-outs”. Give me a break. No true athlete and team player rests on their laurels.
By Robb Maag
August 21, 2008 10:39 AM | Link to this
Thanks, Jeff, for treating us to a column concerning a sport other than baseball, Nascar or golf.
By Randy
August 21, 2008 11:45 AM | Link to this
Looks like Hope Solo’s comments have been vindicated.
Gold for the women! A shut out no less.
By Dan
August 21, 2008 12:03 PM | Link to this
As for the US winning the final soccer. They should not have been there. The goal that they scored in the semis should have been not counted. The player was offsides, as was very clear in the replays. Brasil still has the best team.
By Cowster
August 21, 2008 12:03 PM | Link to this
Hey Sarcasticus,
You could not be more wrong about what happened with Solo. Solo actually walked past the reporters and was headed out of the interview area without making a comment. However when a reporter asked Solo how she felt about the coach’s decision to bench her, the PR man for the team told the reporter that Solo had nothing to say and to keep questions to the players who actually played (i.e. not a scrub sitting on the bench), at that point Solo snapped and made her comments. She was human, emotional, distraught, and this ding bat of a PR person highlights her misery to the entire press corps. Frankly I don’t blame her for what she did, it was unfortunate but human. As for her “teammates” who ostracized a person 8000 miles from home, who was playing for a lost friend and lost father - I do not think their actions are defendable. By the way how did you like the Shutout of Brazil by the USA for the Gold metal in the 2008 Olympics today? Guess who was in the goal? Yep, none other than Hope Solo. The player that Greg Ryan Benched in the World Cup.
By mth
August 21, 2008 12:42 PM | Link to this
For Dan, Brazil may have some very good players, but you saw it today, not the best TEAM. You saw Marta look up in disgust at God, as if it was his fault. She had way too many chances on which she failed. The US proved again that our training is superior. Brazil always relies on individual effort and it doesn’t work in the big games.
I don’t know that some Brazilians can make it in the new WPS. American coaches won’t overemphasize the individual over the team.
By MC
August 21, 2008 1:48 PM | Link to this
Hope Solo was right. She shouldn’t have had to apologize, her teammate’s should have begged for her forgiveness. She played a large part in their gold medal win. And Dan, if Brazil was a team, they might have won, but they are a group of individuals, not a team, and that’s why they can’t win the big game. You can’t rely on individual skill from Marta and expect her to carry you.
By JSS
August 21, 2008 2:01 PM | Link to this
Hey Weasel Schultz,
The US 4 x 100 just flamed out in the prelims, how about giving us some “real” reporting? How about asking the sprint coaches why they have flamed out so badly against the expectations and performances leading up to the start of Athletics events in Beijing? Give it a try Jeffy…
By AK
August 21, 2008 3:21 PM | Link to this
It makes me feel better that there are other people who feel like I do. Hope Solo’s teammates are jealous, disloyal idiots for how they treated her. Instead of supporting the person who excelled playing the most important position in soccer and who had been going through tough personal times, they turned on her for being justifiably upset. It was extremely disgusting to observe. I really hope that Hope knows this and doesn’t feel too bad for her words. Except for Hope, I’ve really disliked that team since that incident.
By dmotomd
August 21, 2008 6:17 PM | Link to this
Congratulations, Hope Solo! As for the rest of the team, well, the only reason I am happy you won is because Hope did the job, no thanks to the rest of you! How can you turn on a player for being so honest! She just wanted to win, that’s all. I read an article a year or two ago written by a US National Alpine racer about how “catty” her teammates were over the several years she was on the team. She questioned why the women couldn’t be like the men and get mad, yell at each other, and then just let it go.
By Michael
August 21, 2008 11:53 PM | Link to this
Methinks there should be a co-authored book deal in the works:
“Soccer Coaching for Dummies: How we benched John Harkes and Hope Solo and, well, got fired” by Steve Sampson and Greg Ryan.
Had these moves been in sports that are more mainstream in the US, it would’ve been a monthlong story. Solo’s story would be kinda like the Colts starting some backup veteran QB in the playoffs over Peyton Manning because this backup threw for 300 yards against the Dolphins or whomever about a decade ago. I’m just glad these girls got a chance to win something big, even though it’s the Olympics and not the World Cup. The Olympics are big, but the World Cup is a little bigger, even in the women’s game.
By JSS
August 22, 2008 7:13 AM | Link to this
Notice the difference in coverage… http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/olympics_blog/2008/08/new-us-track-an.html
By Alicia Sacramone
August 22, 2008 9:31 AM | Link to this
It wasn’t Brianna’s fault. You know, sometimes, in the big moment, you just choke.
By Ken Stallings
August 23, 2008 1:07 AM | Link to this
That sound you just heard was the last shred of self-perceived dignity within Greg Ryan clattering to the floor in shreds. A shutout, against Brazil, in the Olympics.
Greg Ryan, meet your karma. It’s a dish best served cold, and in this case on a plate of gold!