The National Team

by Caitlin Murray

  The Americans still topped Group G, even with the draw to Colombia, which meant they should face a weak team in the quarterfinal. On paper, it was still mission accomplished, but it was a demoralizing result. The players, including Solo, were determined to look ahead.

  “I’ve been around the game long enough to know that it’s part of the position,” Solo said of her mistakes. “I don’t wish it on anybody. Being a goalkeeper is extremely difficult. I’ve been around long enough to know that these things do happen—they’ve happened to me before.”

  “I have also learned to have a short-term memory,” she added. “So I’m just going to put this behind me and move on.”

  * * *

  Pia Sundhage and the Swedish team didn’t have much reason to feel confident going into the quarterfinal.

  The only reason they were facing the Americans, who had won their group, was because the Swedes had played so poorly in the group stage and barely advanced. But for Sundhage, there was nothing to lose by facing her former team. She went into the match with a sense of calm.

  “We’re going to play the best team in the world,” Sundhage told reporters the day before the game. “All the pressure is on the Americans.”

  She added: “We’re going to the quarterfinal, and everyone knows when you get to a quarterfinal, anything can happen.”

  After Sundhage’s press conference, it was Jill Ellis’s turn to face the media. A Brazilian reporter asked the first question: What did the Americans need to worry about going against Sweden?

  “They will park the bus,” Ellis said. “They will sit as low as they possibly can and then look to transition, and they’re going to try to kill the game off that way and not give up space. I imagine they’ll play a 4–5–1 and be very compact.”

  When the game arrived, it was exactly as Jill Ellis had forecasted.

  At Estádio Nacional Mané Garrincha in Brasília, a tense chess match of tactics was playing out. The Americans were persistent in launching the ball forward, but the Swedes were happy to absorb pressure and bide their time.

  The stalemate continued until the 61st minute, when Sweden finally found an opening to attack. Allie Long lofted a ball up the field, trying to find Alex Morgan’s run, but it fell short and was headed away by Nilla Fischer toward Kosovare Asllani.

  Then, the game sped up a few notches: Asllani tapped a short lateral pass to Lisa Dahlkvist, who knocked a perfectly weighted onetime pass up the field toward a sprinting Stina Blackstenius, splitting centerbacks Julie Johnston and Becky Sauerbrunn. Blackstenius beat the defenders and fired a low shot to the far corner, well out of Hope Solo’s reach.

  Pia Sundhage smiled ear to ear and high-fived her coaching assistants. It was just as she had drawn up.

  Once the Swedes got the lead, they weren’t going to give an inch. They put all their players behind the ball to defend, and any attacks forward were half-hearted at best. Up to that point, the Americans had been playing aggressive attacking soccer, and they weren’t about to change now.

  A few minutes after Sweden’s goal, coach Jill Ellis made an attacking substitution. Defender Kelley O’Hara came off and winger Megan Rapinoe came on. This moment was the reason Ellis brought Rapinoe to the Olympics. The Americans needed some service to create goal-dangerous chances. Rapinoe, the player who had lofted a ball onto Abby Wambach’s head in 2011—one of the most spectacular goals in the team’s history—was being asked to do something heroic again.

  She made an impact quickly. In the 77th minute, with a high-booted challenge, Rapinoe plucked a poorly cleared ball out of the air, kicking Kosovare Asllani in the process. Asllani went down in a heap and the crowd booed, wanting the ref to blow the whistle, but the game played on with Rapinoe winning the ball.

  With a couple of quick passes to the other side of the field, Tobin Heath then lofted a ball into the box that took a deflection and landed in front of Alex Morgan’s left foot. Morgan drilled a shot into the corner. Goal, 1–1. The Americans had found their equalizer.

  But the Brazilian crowd seemed to think it was a cheap goal, booing through the celebrations and well after play restarted. Meanwhile, Asllani went to the sideline to be briefly looked at by medical trainers before she returned to the field.

  In the first half, when a Swedish player was down, the Americans, in an act of common but unnecessary soccer etiquette, kicked the ball out of play so she could get medical attention. It’s an unwritten rule—a polite act—but it’s not required. The Americans didn’t do it again once they were down a goal.

  “It’s a nice thing to do, but you’re losing a game,” said Kate Markgraf, who was calling the match live for NBC’s broadcast. “Would you rather go home because you’re playing nice, or do you follow the rules of the game and let the referee decide when play will cease?”

  The fans didn’t care. The Americans had a tendency to win over crowds wherever they went because of their tenacity and flair, but not here in Brazil. The negative energy hung over the team like a fog. It had been there since the first match when fans had started chanting “Zika!” every time Solo kicked the ball. And now it was turning the momentum against them.

  The Americans desperately tried to find their game-winner, but with the score locked at 1–1, the match moved into extra time. The players started to look sluggish, and that especially applied to Megan Rapinoe, who came on as a substitute in the 72nd minute. Ellis subbed her out in favor of forward Christen Press.

  The decision to use up two substitutions on Rapinoe over the course of the game—sacrificing a pair of fresh legs in the process—could come back to haunt Ellis if the Americans didn’t win this. The knock-on effect of putting Tobin Heath, one of the USA’s most creative attacking players, on the defensive line to allow Press to replace Rapinoe was also going to be criticized if the U.S. lost.

  Carli Lloyd should’ve scored in the 115th minute, but the referee incorrectly ruled it offside. A minute later, the same thing happened to Lotta Schelin on the other side of the field: Sweden was wrongly called offside on a goal.

  The match seemed destined to continue into penalty kicks, and so it did.

  * * *

  Momentum in sports is a funny concept.

  So often, players and coaches talk about gaining momentum or losing it. Even fans in the stands and journalists in the press box can see who has the momentum on the field. But it’s not as if a snowball is rolling down a hill, pulled by the force of gravity, accumulating new layers of snow. Momentum, at least in sports, is just a state of mind.

  The inertia—the negative energy holding the Americans back—had been there in Brasília all day. From the boos and the Zika chants, to the team’s barrage of 26 shots that didn’t result in a goal, to the tired legs and makeshift lineup on the field. Things just weren’t going right.

  So when Alex Morgan stepped up to the spot, took the first kick in the shootout, and had her shot blocked, it felt like momentum had something to do with it.

  The Swedes and the Americans then exchanged goals—Lotta Schelin, Lindsey Horan, Kosovare Asllani, and Carli Lloyd all buried their attempts. When Linda Sembrant took her shot, Hope Solo guessed the right way and punched the ball over the net. Was there still time to shift the momentum back?

  Morgan Brian and Caroline Seger each scored. Then Christen Press stepped up. She looked nervous and took a deep sigh before she finally approached the ball. Her foot got too far under it—her shot sailed over the goal.

  When Lisa Dahlkvist stepped up to the spot, everyone knew: If she scored this, Sweden would win and the U.S. was going home. Hope Solo did what she could—she stalled, just like she had at the 2015 World Cup one year earlier. She had a trainer bring her a new pair of gloves. Perhaps she wanted to keep Sweden’s momentum at bay. But Dahlkvist, standing at the spot with the ball in her hands, laughed, as if to say: Take as much time as you want—I’m fine.

  Finally, Dahlkvist took her spot and Solo took hers. Dahlkvist shot to the right while Solo guessed to the
left. Goal. Just like that, the unthinkable had happened: The Americans were knocked out of the Olympics in the quarterfinal, their earliest exit in a major tournament ever.

  The Americans looked stunned. While the Swedes cheered and danced in a huddle, the Americans mostly just stood in silence in the spots they had been standing during the shootout, tears welling up in their eyes.

  What happened in the loss was something that would seem to haunt coach Jill Ellis. It was something that she would spend the next couple of years trying to solve with endless tinkering and tactical experiments. Sweden played defensively—they “bunkered”—and even though Ellis forecasted it in the pregame press conference, she still couldn’t stop it.

  For the American players, it was a devastating loss. They outplayed Sweden in every category except one: the score.

  Never had the U.S. team been knocked out of a major tournament so early. Never had the team failed to make the semifinal of a major tournament. A 25-year streak of top-three finishes in major tournaments had reached its end.

  It was an embarrassment, it was a shock, and it was painful. But pretty soon, that’s not what anyone would be talking about.

  * * *

  After the players emerged from the locker room, they walked through the mixed zone, like they always do, so reporters could ask them questions.

  This mixed zone in Brasília was quiet and low-key. Most reporters covering the Games were in Rio, the host city, and the only reporters eager to speak to the U.S. players were a small handful from major American outlets, plus one Swedish journalist. After all, it was still early in the tournament, and no one had expected the USA to be knocked out so soon.

  Alex Morgan walked through with tears in her eyes. She looked as though she had been crying hard and held it together just enough to talk to reporters.

  “I’m really just heartbroken right now for the girls and the federation,” Morgan said, her voice breaking. “It’s just unfortunate. I feel like we were prepared, but so were Sweden. Today could go either way. Sweden came to play and I feel like they did well and stepped up.”

  The team press officer, Aaron Heifetz, escorted her away after a few minutes.

  Hope Solo then stopped, and the reporters swarmed to get her reaction. Grant Wahl from Sports Illustrated asked the only question you ever need to ask a player after a game—a question that just lets the player get whatever they want off their chest. His question: “Your thoughts on the game?”

  Hope Solo had a lot to get off her chest.

  “I thought we played a courageous game. I thought we had many opportunities on goal,” she said. “I think we showed a lot of heart. We came back from a goal down. I’m very proud of this team.

  “But I also think we played a bunch of cowards. The best team did not win today. I strongly, firmly believe that. I think you saw Americans’ heart. You saw us give everything that we had today and unfortunately the better team didn’t win.”

  Why, Wahl asked, was the Swedish team a bunch of cowards? Solo obliged to elaborate.

  “Sweden dropped off. They didn’t want to open play. They didn’t want to pass the ball around,” Solo said. “They didn’t want to play great soccer, entertaining soccer.”

  “They didn’t try and press. They didn’t want to open the game. And they tried to counter with long balls. We had that style of play when Pia was our coach. I don’t think they’re going to make it very far in the tournament. I think it was very cowardly.”

  She continued: “Pia is somewhat of a tactician. They could only really score on the opportunities for a long ball and set pieces. So I guess you can say it’s smart, but I don’t think it’s respectful to the game.”

  Rather than wait to publish a full article, reporters rushed to get the quote out on social media. Kevin Baxter of the Los Angeles Times was the first—he left the mixed zone while Solo was still being interviewed so he could get a reaction from Pia Sundhage.

  While Solo was still in the mixed zone, Baxter tweeted a snippet: #USWNT’s Hope Solo “we lost to a bunch of cowards. The better team did not win” #Rio2016. His tweet gained traction instantly. ESPN showed a screenshot of it on television.

  Not long after, Wahl tweeted a screenshot of her full quote to his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. Anne M. Peterson of the Associated Press included the “cowards” quote in her postgame write-up, which was sent over the wire to hundreds of newspapers and websites around the world.

  The comment spread like wildfire and Solo was roundly criticized for being a sore loser and defying the competitive spirit of the Olympics.

  Solo says now: “The media said I was the selfish one, that I was the poor sport. But I cared. I went home heartbroken and some of the players went to Rio to party. It’s all how you want to tell the story.”

  While the internet buzzed with reactions to Solo’s comments, Sundhage was sitting in a press conference. There, Baxter relayed Solo’s comments to the Sweden coach for the first time.

  “According to Hope Solo, I think you should define what is a good team,” she said. “Well, usually—especially with the Americans—a good team is when they’re winning.”

  She added: “It’s okay to be a coward if you win.”

  Sundhage was asked about it again as more reporters trickled into her press conference, not aware the question had been asked already, and Sundhage said in Swedish: “I don’t give a crap. I’m going to Rio. She’s going home.”

  Now, years removed from that 2016 press conference, Pia Sundhage says she regrets what she said. What got buried in all the controversy was what Sweden accomplished: No one had ever bested the Americans so early in a major tournament. Never had the Americans failed to come in at least third place.

  “That just came out of my mouth,” Sundhage says now. “I apologized the next day. The fact is, I don’t think that people understand what we did. The U.S. had been winning a medal every single time since ’91. Sweden was the first team to kick them out. I could tell all the American players were devastated.”

  It was perhaps a twist of irony: The coach who had brought Hope Solo back into the national team when Solo had been exiled was now the coach responsible for the loss that was about to end Solo’s career.

  While Solo’s remarks were ricocheting around every corner of the media landscape, Solo got on the team bus, went back to the hotel, and then went to the meal room, where she saw Sunil Gulati, the president of U.S. Soccer. They sat down to chat.

  “He said one of his friends in real estate in Seattle saw that my home was up for sale,” Solo remembers. “He saw a photo of it and said, You have a really beautiful home, and he made a joke about how, We must be paying you well, and we kind of laughed. He said, I know it hurts—he empathized with the loss. We talked like everything was normal and said, I’ll see you tomorrow. It wasn’t anything.”

  Gulati confirms that encounter happened, but he says he hadn’t yet known about her controversial remarks.

  Later, Solo sought out Lotta Schelin, the captain of the Swedish team, who was staying in the same hotel. Solo and Schelin had played together for the same club in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2004, where they became friends. Schelin later told Swedish press about the encounter—that Solo had apologized and there was no problem.

  “It was in the heat of the moment,” Schelin said of Solo’s comments.

  The news of Schelin and Solo’s amicable meeting didn’t make the rounds in the American press, and Solo still laments that some people still don’t know she had made amends directly with the Swedish team.

  “When American media still wanted to take my head off, I addressed the people who I wanted to address,” she says.

  The next morning, with the U.S. national team’s Olympics officially over, it was time for the players to disperse. While a few of them stuck around to visit Rio and experience the rest of the Olympics, Solo was ready to get out of Brazil and return to Seattle, Washington. The U.S. players who opted to leave Brazil had tickets on the same flig
ht to the U.S., and then everyone had connections to their final destinations.

  Solo arrived at the gate early, still upset and teary-eyed about the loss to Sweden, and was the first passenger on the plane. Not far behind was Jill Ellis, who boarded after her.

  Before the other players boarded, the national team’s goalkeeper and coach had time to chat. They talked about the future.

  “It was just Jill and I and on the plane for 15 minutes before anyone else came on,” Solo says. “We talked about where the game was headed in the future, things we need to look for in the next World Cup to get around a team that bunkers. She talked to me about how much I’m going to be needed in the next World Cup.”

  “It was a really positive conversation, but knowing we had to address different strategies on how to beat a team that’s bunkering and what we’re going to do with our defenders and why she needed me in the back because we were probably going to push more defenders up,” Solo says. “It was a turning of the page. We lost an Olympics and now we need to look forward at how we’re going to learn from this.”

  Solo says she brought up her “cowards” comment—she asked Ellis if she saw it. Ellis said she had but didn’t seem worried about it, as far as Solo could tell.

  “She said, Can’t you just apologize on Twitter or something?” Solo says. “She didn’t care at all.”

  So on August 13, 2016, Solo flew home, still devastated about the loss to Sweden but thinking the fallout from her postgame interview was over.

  That same day, Grant Wahl published an interview with Sunil Gulati where Wahl asked about Solo’s comments. Gulati was critical, telling Wahl: “While we are all very disappointed with the results of the match, Hope’s post-game comments were highly inappropriate and not in line with the expectations of U.S. Soccer or the ideals of the Olympic movement.”

  Gulati says he also sent Solo a text message that day—the day after the game—expressing his disappointment in what she had said.