The National Team

by Caitlin Murray

  But whatever Sermanni was doing seemed to be working just fine. In 15 months on the job, he was unbeaten. Leading up to the 2014 Algarve Cup, the U.S. nabbed wins against key opponents like Germany, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico, among others. There was every indication the Americans would continue their dominance.

  Meanwhile, Sermanni hadn’t really talked to U.S. Soccer about the direction of the team since he was interviewed for the job. As far as he knew, they were happy with how the team looked.

  He says now: “I didn’t have an awful lot of discussions with U.S. Soccer, to be honest. I just did my job. Maybe I should’ve had more.”

  But he didn’t, and then the 2014 Algarve Cup started. Everything was about to change very quickly.

  * * *

  The Americans opened the Algarve Cup with a draw to Japan. But in the next match, which happened to be against Sweden and Pia Sundhage, the U.S. lost for the first time under Sermanni. Sweden won 1–0, but only after Abby Wambach failed to convert an early penalty kick.

  The loss marked the end of a 43-game unbeaten streak for the Americans, 22 of those games under Sundhage and the next 21 games under Sermanni. A U.S. national team that looked practically invincible had finally been beaten, even if just barely.

  But, as it turned out, the loss was only a preview of what was to come.

  In the next game, Denmark stunned the Americans by scoring three goals before the half. Whenever it looked like the Americans might come roaring back—Christen Press, Sydney Leroux, and Megan Rapinoe all scored goals—Denmark also came back and scored. The match ended 5–3, and the Americans seemed shell-shocked by the result.

  The match was a weird one, to be sure. Still, to this day, Sermanni can’t really explain it except to say soccer is susceptible to weird results sometimes.

  “Denmark is one of those games you can’t explain,” he says. “Every time they went up the field, they scored a goal.”

  The loss to Denmark set some dubious milestones. It was the first time the U.S. had ever given up five goals in a single game. It was also the first time they’d lost by two goals since 2008, when they lost to Norway to open the Olympics but eventually went on to win gold. The match also marked the first time the U.S. had lost two games in a row since 2001.

  “It was just one of those tournaments,” Sermanni says now. “When you get to a tournament and things start to go wrong, it’s sometimes hard to turn them around and get them back on track as quickly as you’d like.”

  The U.S. rebounded with a win over North Korea in their final match of the tournament, but it was small consolation. The Americans finished the tournament in seventh place, their worst-ever showing in an Algarve Cup.

  In the grand scheme of the national team, the poor Algarve Cup performance appeared to be nothing more than a small blip. Minor setbacks were inevitable, and the team had come back from bad games before.

  But the players started hinting publicly that maybe the results were part of a larger problem.

  “We haven’t really been playing the way we normally play,” Wambach told Sports Illustrated. “I think there’s been a lot of factors. I know Tom likes to switch up the lineup quite a bit, which is very different than what we’ve been used to. So, learning how to play with new players game after game after game, it’s harder to get a rhythm. That’s why our team has always been so successful—because I always know exactly what Alex Morgan is going to do.”

  Morgan, who was injured and not in Portugal for the Algarve Cup, said she had spoken to her teammates who were at the tournament and delicately hinted the team wasn’t in a good state. Echoing Wambach’s comments, she suggested Sermanni’s constant rotation could be to blame.

  “I think the girls are a little bit down in Portugal right now, but I think Tom and the coaching staff and the players all need to get together and work something out because the lineup changes could be a factor,” Morgan said. “I’ve gotten a lot of texts and calls from them and I really hope to be back with them soon, but they’re going through a rough time and so I hope they pick it back up.”

  After that, it appeared the national team was putting the results behind them. Following the Algarve Cup, they were set to host China for a pair of friendlies the next month. It should be back to business as usual.

  * * *

  It was April 6, 2014, on a sunny afternoon in Denver, Colorado. Tom Sermanni had just led the national team to a convincing 2–0 win over China. So when Sermanni met with U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati and secretary general Dan Flynn, the furthest thing from his mind was that he may have just coached his last game at the helm of the U.S. national team.

  The meeting was a short one. Gulati and Flynn told Sermanni that the federation needed to go in another direction and he was being relieved of his duties as head coach of the national team. They didn’t get into specifics, but they said the team environment wasn’t working and they hadn’t seen the progress they wanted on the field.

  Sermanni was blindsided. At the time, he had no idea there were any concerns with his leadership, and still to this day, he doesn’t know how he could’ve seen it coming. There had been no conversations beforehand outlining concerns. No warnings that the federation expected anything other than what Sermanni was doing.

  His wife was out of the country, and he lucked out that when he called her to tell her the news, she answered the phone. If she hadn’t gotten his call, she would have found out from someone else—Sermanni said the news of his firing was shared on social media immediately after his meeting with Gulati and Flynn.

  “That was the part of it where I felt a distinct lack of respect for the organization, because they did that poorly,” he says. “It was poor for the organization to do it the way they did. I have no qualms with what they did, but it could’ve been done better and more professionally, and there could’ve been something done prior to that happening rather than it suddenly flying out of the blue.”

  One by one, after Sermanni got the news, the players came up to his hotel room in Colorado to say goodbye and thank him for his time. Abby Wambach was the first player to come to his room.

  Later, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati told reporters he consulted with players before the decision to fire Sermanni. The Algarve Cup results were a factor, but they were not the sole reason or even the main reason—rather, the poor results brought to light other concerns. Gulati declined to reveal how the conversation with players started—whether they approached him about a coaching change or the other way around.

  But rumors of a player revolt of sorts had already been spreading. After all, players had pushed out national team coaches before. Even if there were no confirmed reports, Sermanni’s constant rotation of new players and the sudden nature of his firing led to such speculation. Wambach vehemently denied it, telling reporters: “Everybody out there who may think the players made this happen, none of it’s true.”

  Alex Morgan later admitted, though: “Many of the experienced players felt they hadn’t been pushed enough, and they thought the coaching staff’s expectations of them had noticeably dropped. It was as if Tom thought there was enough talent on the team that we didn’t need to keep fighting. Being too relaxed and not nurturing that ultracompetitive, hard-driven culture caused us to drop games.”

  Sources now say some of the players actively pushed for the change and initiated some of those conversations with Gulati. The federation was forced into a decisive action because the World Cup was only a year away. In that sense, Sermanni’s exit from the team wasn’t all that different than the coaches who had come before him. Pia Sundhage, Greg Ryan, and April Heinrichs all ended up leaving the national team, on some level, because of players who wanted a change.

  As the focus switched to who would take the job next, Heather O’Reilly told reporters the team needed a coach who was a better “cultural fit.” Gulati, asked about that, said she was “probably referring to someone that can take a very strong leadership position.” Julie Foudy, now an ana
lyst for ESPN, reported from player sources that Sermanni’s “laissez-faire” style didn’t sit well with the team.

  Looking back now, Sermanni seems to agree with that.

  “I needed to be more forceful in managing my way,” Sermanni says. “When I think about it in hindsight and how I believe a team should be managed, I should’ve been more forceful in what I do best. It wasn’t about me changing—it was about me being more decisive.”

  “I didn’t get a handle on some of that stuff until it was too late,” he adds.

  Although his rotation of players was the root of some consternation at the time, Sermanni’s legacy may very well be in all the youth he integrated into the team.

  Players like Morgan Brian, Julie Johnston, Crystal Dunn, Christen Press, and Lindsey Horan eventually developed into starting fixtures for the team, and Sermanni had given them all their first caps. In some cases, he seemed to spot something special—Brian, for instance, had been a college player at the University of Virginia and with the U.S. under-20 team before he called her into the senior team and quickly saw a player who could play a big role at the 2015 World Cup. Dunn was an attacking player he’d identified as an outside back, a position she would later reprise long after his exit.

  With Sermanni’s departure, Jill Ellis, who had held various positions within U.S. Soccer, took over as the interim replacement while U.S. Soccer looked for a permanent coach. Ellis had turned down the job after Pia Sundhage left—Ellis had just adopted her daughter and felt the timing wasn’t right. But by now, she wanted it.

  So Ellis interviewed for the job with two other finalists who were well-known to U.S. Soccer—the surest sign that the federation wasn’t taking any chances on another outsider. Tony DiCicco was interviewed but ultimately eliminated from the running. The federation’s final decision came down to Ellis or Tony Gustavsson, a Swede who had been Pia Sundhage’s trusted assistant coach when the national team won gold at the 2012 Olympics.

  In the end, U.S. Soccer hired both—Ellis was named head coach, and Gustavsson, who wanted to continue to live in Europe, was named an assistant coach with the task of scouting players abroad.

  In Ellis, U.S. Soccer had someone who had coached almost every single player on the national team over the course of her previous jobs, which included coaching some of U.S. Soccer’s youth national teams and the UCLA Bruins. The players knew Ellis and were comfortable with her, and her style was one that focused heavily on tactics and giving clear roles to players.

  “She was a modern coach, utilizing video analysis and statistics in a way Tom hadn’t,” Alex Morgan later said.

  But Ellis didn’t get to settle into the job too long before one of the biggest controversies in the national team’s history struck.

  * * *

  On June 19, 2014, the national team had a friendly versus France in East Hartford, Connecticut. It was the second in a two-game series against one of the best teams in the world just one year out from the 2015 World Cup—an ideal tune-up match to see where the national team stood.

  Hope Solo normally would’ve started in net for a game like this. She had 152 national team appearances and, in the game before, she had just tied Briana Scurry for the team’s all-time shutout record. But on this day, the starting goalkeeper was Ashlyn Harris, who had appeared in only two other national team matches before.

  Solo was officially listed as “unavailable due to a family commitment.” She was supposed to be available in time for a Seattle Reign match in Rochester, New York, three days later, but she never made it to that NWSL game.

  After an incident the evening of June 20, 2014, Solo was arrested and charged with assaulting her 17-year-old nephew and her half sister.

  The media picked up on the sordid details of the police report immediately. It revealed, at best, a drunken fight of sorts. The alleged victims in the case called Solo the instigator, saying she punched her nephew in the head with closed fists. Solo denied hitting anyone and said her half sister hit her over the head with a broomstick. Police observed bruises and scrapes on Solo’s relatives, while Solo refused to let police inspect injuries she might have, and Solo was arrested.

  The misdemeanor fourth-degree assault charges were given the “domestic violence” tag because the alleged victims were family—even though Solo didn’t live with them and they told police they had been estranged until relatively recently. The “domestic violence” label was attention-grabbing fodder for the media, though. Columnists rushed to compare Solo with Ray Rice and Greg Hardy—two male NFL players who had recently been accused of horrific assaults on their female significant others—and demanded that Solo be kicked off the national team.

  Once the details of the arrest started to make the rounds, Solo posted a message online apologizing for “an unfortunate incident” but vowing she would be cleared of the charges, even if she couldn’t share her side of the story:

  Due to pending legal issues, I cannot comment further at this time. However, I am confident in the legal process and believe my name will be cleared.

  Sunil Gulati, the president of U.S. Soccer, said he spoke with Solo and read the apology she posted online but the federation would hold off on reprimanding her.

  “We have to wait and see what happens with the legal process,” he told media before adding: “We would much prefer to have her in the news for great goalkeeping performances than anything else.”

  Solo promptly went back to starting games for the national team and looking like one of the best goalkeepers the world had ever seen. She even wore the captain’s armband on September 18, 2014, in honor of the fact that she had set a new shutout record for the national team. All the while, media outlets slammed U.S. Soccer for it because her assault case was still unresolved.

  The case against Solo didn’t seem particularly strong—the alleged victims were not cooperating and it looked like it would probably be dismissed. In December 2014, that’s exactly what happened, although prosecutors vowed to appeal.

  The good news for the national team, at least, was that now the distraction of Solo’s legal issues was in the past and the team could focus on the Women’s World Cup, which was now only a few months away.

  But that didn’t quite happen. On January 19, 2015, Solo made headlines again.

  She was at the national team’s annual January camp outside of Los Angeles when she allowed her visiting husband, Jerramy Stevens, to drive a U.S. Soccer–rented car. Stevens had been drinking and was pulled over after police allegedly saw the car swerving off the road. Stevens was arrested on DUI charges, and Solo, who was the passenger, was reported to have been “belligerent” toward the arresting officers. The federation didn’t know about the incident until celebrity tabloid TMZ reported the news.

  After the federation had been slammed by the media for not punishing Solo throughout the episode surrounding her arrest, there was little choice this time. Solo was suspended from the team for 30 days. Her suspension was scheduled to end about four months before the World Cup was set to start.

  “During our current national team camp, Hope made a poor decision that has resulted in a negative impact on U.S. Soccer and her teammates,” coach Jill Ellis said in a statement. “We feel at this time it is best for her to step away from the team.”

  By this point, Solo was hardly a stranger to controversy within the national team.

  The world had seen how she’d criticized Greg Ryan’s decision at the 2007 World Cup and was kicked off the team. During the 2012 Olympics, she’d called out Brandi Chastain, who was a commentator for NBC, tweeting: “Lay off commentating about defending and goalkeeping until you get more educated @brandichastain. The game has changed from a decade ago.” Now, her arrest and assault charges were front-page news.

  But there was a history within the team of things involving Solo that needed to be dealt with, even if they were never made public. Pia Sundhage admits she had to deal with a couple of issues while she coached Solo, but she didn’t let it become the fo
cus of what she was doing.

  “There were one or two things, but you have to be respectful, you have to be smart, and you have to just talk to people,” Sundhage says. “We worked it out. We wanted to train. We wanted to improve the game.”

  A couple of players who ask not to be identified say Solo had broken team rules about curfew more than once. They remember a specific incident during a tournament where Solo spent the night with her boyfriend instead of in her assigned room. These players say they told Sundhage, who chose not to punish Solo rather than turn it into an ordeal.

  On the flip side, Hope Solo was the greatest goalkeeper in the world. Sometimes what makes an athlete so great on the field can be the same thing that causes them problems off the field. Could you have Solo, the top goalkeeper, without Solo, the troublemaker? With a few months until the World Cup, there were more pressing questions at the moment, though. What if prosecutors revived Solo’s case and she was convicted? What if she got into trouble again? Would the federation have to suspend her?

  Could the USA win a World Cup without Solo?

  CHAPTER 18

  “I’ve Dreamed of Scoring a Shot Like That”

  Even before the players of the national team knew their opponents for the 2015 World Cup, they were already in a back-and-forth battle.

  This time it was with FIFA, the organization that oversees soccer throughout the world and organizes the Women’s World Cup. FIFA, along with the Canadian Soccer Association, or CSA, planned to put every game of the 2015 Women’s World Cup on artificial turf, something that had never been proposed for a senior World Cup before, including all 20 men’s World Cups prior.

  Artificial turf has become a necessity in some climates where it’s hard to maintain grass or at venues that need to stand up to constant use. Where natural grass isn’t a viable option, artificial turf is the next-best alternative. But generally, soccer is supposed to be played on natural grass.