by Hope Solo
On Thursday, September 27, the news that I had lost my starting job was beginning to reverberate back home, on blogs and sports shows. ESPN’s commentators—Julie Foudy and former U.S. coach Tony DiCicco—expressed amazement at Greg’s decision. Why would someone make such a radical change when things were going so well? “It makes a negative impact when you want to only be focusing on positive things,” Julie said. “I think it’s the wrong decision.”
DiCicco agreed. “If there isn’t a goalkeeper controversy, why make one?”
“This is the type of decision that keeps you employed or quickly gets you unemployed,” ESPN commentator Rob Stone offered.
Because of the time difference, our games were airing at dawn in the United States. Back in Seattle, where it was still dark, Lesle Gallimore turned on the television and read the crawl across the screen. “Hope Solo replaced in goal by Briana Scurry.” She fumbled for her phone to call Amy. “Is Hope hurt? What’s going on?”
I didn’t carry any ashes with me onto the field in Hangzhou. My dad wouldn’t be beside me on the bench. And then the game started.
The worst World Cup game in U.S. history. In the 4–0 loss to Brazil, my team played like a group that had been blindsided.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Stepping into Liquid
When the carnage had ended and Brazil had danced off, I made my way across the field.
Abby stopped me. “Hope, I was wrong,” she told me.
I nodded, but I was on a mission to find my family, to thank them for supporting me. I crossed the field to them, and Marcus leaned over the railing toward me, the pain showing on his face. In his hands he held tight his container of my father’s ashes.
“This was supposed to be for Dad,” he said, his voice quivering on the edge of tears.
That broke me open. I wanted so much to be strong for my family, to honor our father. I ached to make them proud. And now there was only more hurt. But I did draw strength just being near my family. And from Adrian, who, at the end of game, had run around the stadium to the stands above the tunnel where Greg Ryan was exiting the field, to yell at him, telling him what an idiot he was. Adrian had my back and didn’t care who heard him.
As the stadium emptied, I reached up to squeeze my family’s hands and say thank you. Finally, a security guard came to get me. I was the last player left behind. I said my good-byes and walked to the tunnel that led to the locker room. Adrian was still in the stands there, waiting for me. “Be strong, Hope,” he said. “Be confident. Be honest. Don’t be afraid to tell that asshole what you think.”
Reporters were waiting for us in the bowels of the stadium, pressed up against the metal barricades, eager to capture our words on this historic defeat. Our press officer, Aaron Heifetz, stuck close to my side as I walked past reporters and the ESPN cameras. I was almost to the bus when a woman I didn’t recognize leaned over the rail and asked me a question.
Heifetz answered for me. “She didn’t play,” he barked. “You only want to talk to people who played the game.”
I stopped walking. I wasn’t allowed to speak for myself? “Heif, this is my decision,” I said, and turned toward the woman with the microphone.
“It was the wrong decision,” I said. “And I think anybody that knows anything about the game knows that. There’s no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves. And the fact of the matter is, it’s not 2004 anymore. It’s not 2004. It’s 2007, and I think you have to live in the present. And you can’t live by big names. You can’t live in the past. It doesn’t matter what somebody did in an Olympic gold medal game three years ago. Now is what matters, and that’s what I think.”
I turned away and headed toward the bus. “Don’t ever tell me what interviews I can do,” I said to Heifetz.
He was furious. He told me he was probably going to lose his job. He went back and reprimanded the reporter for hounding me and shepherded Bri past reporters without stopping.
I walked to the back of the team bus and sat down near my close friends. The mood was grim, the conversation muted. Players were exhausted, angry, in shock. “I just did an interview,” I said to Carli, Tina, and whoever was nearby.
“What did you say?”
“I said I believed I would have made those saves.”
“Uh oh, Hope,” someone said with a laugh.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Carli said.
“I don’t know if it is,” I said and put my earbuds in.
It didn’t feel like anything was fine. Our team had just suffered its worst World Cup loss in history, our first loss in almost three years. In ninety minutes, everything we had worked for had been erased.
The bus pulled out of the stadium and took us to our Hangzhou hotel. The plan was to eat and have a quick visit with our families before the long bus ride back to Shanghai. While we were in the lobby, talking in subdued voices, the Brazilian team and their supporters came in. They were at the same hotel, a boneheaded move on the part of the Chinese organizers. The Brazilians danced around the lobby, doing the samba, beating their drums, snaking through the small groups of American supporters. You could feel the tension rise—I wouldn’t have been surprised if a fistfight broke out. Brazil was celebrating in that uniquely Brazilian way, but they were rubbing our faces in the loss.
Soon we got back on the bus to ride through the night to Shanghai, where we would play a third-place game in a few days. Some people slept. Others checked their phones, talking to family back in the States, where it was still morning.
Carli texted with her trainer, James, in New Jersey. She turned to me. “Hope, James says this is blowing up back home,” she said. “It’s all over the news.”
“What is?”
“Your interview.”
For the rest of the ride, I stared out the window, watching the lights rush past in the dark night, replaying my words in my head. I had said what I thought about Greg’s decision—I assumed he had told the press his reasoning for starting Bri. I felt justified in stating my point of view.
Once we got to the Westin Shanghai, Carli and Marci Miller—whom I roomed with in Shanghai—huddled with me in front of the computer. We found the interview on ESPN and watched it. “It’s not so bad, is it?” I asked them. “That was meant for Greg, not Bri.”
Carli and Marci hesitantly agreed. No, it wasn’t horrible.
“Well,” I said, trying to laugh, “I guess it’s only a matter of time before I get hell from the older players.”
Right then, my phone rang. I looked at Carli and Marci. “I guarantee you this is them,” I said as I picked up.
It was Lil. She said the veterans wanted to talk to me and asked if I would come to their room.
II.
I walked down the hall. By now it was after midnight. I pushed open the door of Lil’s room and saw the veterans grimly waiting for me. Kate Markgraf stood by the door. Lil, Shannon Boxx, Christie Rampone, Abby, and Bri sat on the beds. I walked across to the other side of the room and leaned against the wall.
They had seen the interview. I was told that I had, in their opinion, broken a team code.
“Well, I’m a professional athlete—of course I believe I could make a difference on the field,” I said. “Just like you guys do,” I added. “We should all believe we can make a difference or else why are we professional athletes?”
Kate Markgraf turned on me. “I can’t even fucking look at you,” she said. “Who the fuck do you think you are? I can’t even be in the same room with you.”
She walked out and slammed the door behind her. Wow, I thought, that seems overly dramatic.
Now there were five. I stood and listened as each had her say. They told me that you don’t throw a teammate under the bus, that I had broken the code, that I had betrayed the team. I was told that I had ruined everything this team was built on, and that I had torn down what Julie F
oudy and Mia and Lil and all the players who paved the way for us had created.
“This isn’t about Julie Foudy or anyone else from the past,” I said. “This is about our team. I would never do anything to hurt Bri. I have so much respect for Bri. But as a professional athlete, I’m confident that I would have made a difference in the game. I believe in myself enough to know that I would have made an impact. I think all of us believe in ourselves enough to think we can affect the outcome.”
“Are you even going to apologize to Bri?” someone asked.
I turned toward Bri. I wanted her to know that I wasn’t trying to hurt her, not after everything she had done for me when my father died. I felt backed against the wall.
Bri spoke first. She told me I had hurt her very much. She said she had tried to be there for me when my father died and was shocked that I would do this to her.
“I’m sorry Bri,” I said. “I really am. I didn’t mean to hurt you. My comments were directed at Greg, not at you.”
I could tell how awkward I sounded. I wanted to have a private moment with Bri but I was in a room full of angry women who demanded that I perform a public act of contrition. Everything felt forced. Staged.
“Hope, we’ve heard your side of things,” Christie Rampone said. “You’ve heard how we feel. So how are we going to move forward and make this better?”
I looked at Pearcie with gratitude. She was the only one trying to lead us through the mess, to cut through the harsh words and angry feelings. The group decided that the way to move forward was for me to apologize to the entire team. They told me there would be a team meeting in the morning.
I went back to my room for a few tortured hours. I couldn’t sleep. I cried most of the night and tried to figure out what to do. All my life I’ve said exactly what I thought and stood up for myself. But now I was in a firestorm for doing just that. I felt terrible that I had hurt Bri. She had been so kind to me when my father died. I vowed to talk to her in the morning and try to make things right between us.
The next morning when I stepped into the room, I saw Bri standing by the door and I paused. “Bri, do you have a second?” I said. “Please know I would never want to hurt you. I have so much respect for you.”
She turned away from me. “Hope, I can’t even look at you right now,” she said.
OK, I thought. This is going to take time. This is going to be on Bri’s terms. I have to be patient.
I walked into the room and felt twenty sets of eyes bore into me. I was on stage. I said the same thing I had said to the smaller group in Lil’s room the night before. “I never meant to hurt Bri,” I said. “My comments were directed at Greg and his reasoning. I said I would have made those saves because I truly have to believe I could have made a difference.”
I didn’t see any sign of support. I saw hostility and anger. Hatred, even. Hard words were flung at me.
“You don’t sound sincere.”
“Do you even care what you’ve done?”
“How can you turn your back on the team?”
“Do you know how horrible you looked on television, pouting on the bench?”
“You’ve been feeling sorry for yourself since Greg told you that you weren’t starting. Some of us sit on the bench every game.”
I looked at my few close friends, hoping for a sympathetic face, but all I saw were blank, cold stares. I looked at the faces of the younger players, like Aly and Cat and Leslie Osborne and Lori Chalupny and Tina Frimpong, my former UW teammate. I had become a pariah. Everyone was following Lil and Abby. No one would stand up for me. Only Carli seemed to have any sympathy in her expression.
“You haven’t even apologized to Bri,” someone said.
I had already apologized to Bri in Lil’s room the night before. I had just spoken to her again outside the door. But I apologized to Bri again, in front of everyone. I had maintained my composure through most of the meeting, but as I spoke, my voice broke. “I’m sorry Bri,” I said. “I never meant to hurt you. I’m sorry that I did.”
I was asked to leave the room while my fate was decided.
III.
We had a pool workout at the hotel later that morning, to help rejuvenate our legs. I felt awkward, unsure of where to go. No one spoke to me. I didn’t know what had been decided after I left the room.
When I got into the pool, my teammates stayed away from me, as though I had some disease that could be transmitted through the water. After the workout, I got out of the pool first. As soon as I did, my teammates gathered for a team cheer.
Oh, God, I thought. I don’t look like a team player.
I jumped back into the water. And then it dawned on me that the only reason they had done the cheer was because I was out of the pool.
After the workout, Greg spoke to a small gathering of press in the hotel lobby. Almost all the questions were about me. “There are always opportunities for reconciliation,” he said. “We’ll work to try to get past this hurdle.”
But my teammates had already decided that reconciliation wasn’t the answer. After I had left the meeting, they had deemed my apology insincere. I needed to be punished. They would not allow me to play in the third-place game. I couldn’t even go to the game. I couldn’t eat meals with the team. I was suspended. They also decided that I needed to call Julie Foudy to apologize to her for tarnishing the legacy she helped build, which seemed absurd to me.
Later that day, Greg called me into his room. He was smiling and friendly as he told me I was suspended. He told me that he had done bad things in his career, how once he stormed off the field after getting subbed out in a game. He suggested that I could move on, but it would be hard because I had let down my teammates.
“Greg, what I said wasn’t directed at my teammates,” I said. “It was directed at your decision. I wasn’t putting down Bri. I was putting down your decision-making process.”
Greg, who had already told me several different reasons for his decision, decided to drop another one on me now. He said that I had broken team rules, that on the night before the quarterfinal, I had missed curfew and a team dinner. He implied that I was out partying and not taking care of my body.
“I was at the family hotel playing cards with my grandparents,” I said. “I took a cab home. I wasn’t the only player there. I haven’t even had a fucking drink in five months.”
Now, twenty-four hours after the game, he decided I had violated a team rule? I felt that he was throwing darts, hoping to land on a decent reason for benching me, playing a game with my career.
After the meeting our team general manager, Cheryl Bailey, walked me back to my room. Cheryl seemed sympathetic. She handed me tissues and walked me around the hotel. She was the only one giving me any answers. She didn’t say anything directly against Greg or my teammates, but I felt that she thought what was happening was bizarre. She helped me move out of Marci’s room and into my own room.
Later that night, I logged onto MySpace, went to my page, and posted a comment.
I have felt compelled to clear the air regarding many of my postgame comments on Thursday night. I am not proud or happy the way things have come out. In my eyes there is no justification to put down a teammate. That is not what I was doing.
Although I stand strong in everything I said, the true disheartening moment for me was realizing it could look as though I was taking a direct shot at my own teammate. I would never throw such a low blow. Never.
I only wanted to speak of my own abilities yet also recognize that the past is the past. Things were taken out of context or analyzed differently from my true meaning of my own words. For that I am sorry. I hope everybody will come to know I have a deep respect for this team and for Bri.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Carli. “How are you? I’m thinking about you. Hang in there.”
I felt the warmth of her embrace. I still had a frie
nd in the world.
Adrian came over that night to have dinner with me. I wasn’t allowed to eat with the team, but I wasn’t hungry anyway. While we sat in the lobby with our food, Lil walked past us without a glance, as though we weren’t even there, as though we were furniture.
“Wow,” Adrian said. “What a bitch.”
IV.
On Saturday, the day before the third-place game, I was left behind at the hotel while the team went to training. Our massage therapist, Kara, stayed to babysit me. I’m not sure what they were afraid would happen if I were left alone: That I would call the press? Riffle through my teammates’ belongings? Harm myself?
I really wanted to be alone, but Kara seemed to think it would be calming to watch a surf movie. She tried to make me comfortable. She burned incense. We watched Step into Liquid. I felt I was in prison.
Our general manager Cheryl met with me after training. She had more bad news. She told me I couldn’t fly home with the team on Monday.
All I wanted was to get home as quickly as possible. Instead, I would have to wait for more than half a day after everyone else left China before I could get a flight home late Monday night.
That afternoon, there was a press conference at the team hotel. “We did not have Hope attend practice today,” Greg said. “She will not be attending the game tomorrow. We have moved forward with twenty players who have stood by each other, who have battled for each other, and when the hard times came—and the Brazil game was a hard time—they stood strong.”
Lil spoke. “How we look at everything with our group is we do what’s best for the team,” she said. “And what is best for the team is the twenty of us right now. I think the circumstance that happened and her going public has affected the whole group. I think having her with us is still a distraction.”
Yes, I was definitely a distraction—it seemed to me that I was a welcome distraction from having to face up to the disaster of the Brazil game. As long as the focus was on me, Greg wasn’t held accountable. The horrible loss wasn’t the headline.