Solo

by Hope Solo

  The whistle blew. We were going to penalty kicks.

  IV.

  My team was amped up at midfield, full of energy and adrenaline and pulsing with confidence. I walked away from them to compose myself; I didn’t need amping up. I needed to be calm and clear-minded, fully focused. I walked over to the corner flag on the side of the field where my loved ones were sitting. They were so close I could almost reach out and touch them. I sat on the grass and took deep breaths and looked up at Marcus. I could see how nervous he was—he looked as though he might faint. My mom and Adrian gave me nods of assurance—I could see the love and confidence in their eyes. I looked at Amy and Lesle in the front row, my soccer believers.

  “It just takes one,” Amy said. I could see her mouth the words and hold up one finger. I was having my own private moment with the people who meant the most to me, in the midst of a global audience of millions.

  “It just takes one,” Amy said again.

  “OK,” I thought to myself. “I’ve got this.”

  We had practiced penalty kicks the day before. I had a good feeling.

  Boxxy went first for us. Andréia, Brazil’s goalkeeper, came so far off her line to block the shot that even Melksham couldn’t screw up the call. Boxxy retook the kick, went the same way—to her right—and made it easily.

  U.S. 1, Brazil 0.

  I stood up and windmilled my arms as I walked to the line. Cristiane was waiting. I didn’t get a good read on the ball—she went to her left and made the shot. U.S. 1, Brazil 1.

  Carli was up next. She hammered the ball into the left-side netting past a diving Andréia. U.S. 2, Brazil 1.

  Marta walked up next as the crowd booed and whistled. The greatest player in the world had turned into the villain. I’ve always liked Marta—she’s a little dirty, but she plays with so much passion and soul. I was a bit surprised to see her shooting second: Brazil was using their best two shooters in the first two spots, putting pressure on the players who would shoot after them. I guessed left, she went to my right.

  U.S. 2, Brazil 2.

  Abby was next. She never even looked at Andréia. She kept her head down and put the ball in the right corner of the net. U.S. 3, Brazil 2.

  Daiane walked up. I watched her line up to shoot. I felt confident.

  I got a good read on the ball. I extended completely to my right and extended my hand, pushing the ball safely away. I was already celebrating as I landed; I rolled over and jumped up, my arms extended in the air in triumph. It just takes one. And I had one. U.S. 3, Brazil 2.

  Rapinoe was next. She shot under a diving Andréia. I liked seeing the calm confidence from our players, many of whom had never been on such a big stage. U.S. 4, Brazil 2.

  Franciela was up. She put a shot past my right hand. U.S. 4, Brazil 3.

  One more converted kick and we would win, completing the amazing comeback. I went back to my corner to watch.

  Ali Krieger stepped up. She kept her head down and didn’t look at Andréia, who stood on the line like the Cristo statue in Rio, arms outstretched. Andréia jumped off her line well before Ali shot, but it didn’t matter. Ali tapped her shot into the left corner of the net. U.S. 5, Brazil 3.

  Ali sprinted toward our bench, where the reserve players and coaches were flooding onto the field, leaping with joy. The players on the field all ran to envelop Ali.

  All but one. Abby veered to her right, sprinting straight toward me. I ran to her and leaped into her arms screaming with joy, and we fell to the ground. Together.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Silver Lining

  Forty-seven thousand fans in Yankee Stadium roared at the big screen as we went to penalty kicks against Brazil. Flights in Denver were delayed until the game ended. Everyone back home, it seemed, had stopped whatever they were doing to watch our game as Sunday morning stretched into Sunday afternoon. Even if they didn’t start out watching it, as the game progressed, someone called or tweeted or posted on Facebook about this amazing soccer game, and more and more people tuned in to see what it was all about. And they were captivated.

  “I love these women!” tweeted Tom Hanks.

  LeBron James offered, “Congrats, ladies!”

  “Amazing game,” Aaron Rodgers tweeted. “Now let’s get the cup, ladies!”

  I was named the player of the match. That night Abby and I took a car service to the ESPN set in downtown Dresden. “When did you score your goal?” I asked her in the back of the car, while I checked the messages and texts flooding my phone.

  “I think in the 120th minute,” Abby said.

  No, Aaron Heifetz said, it was later than that. It was the latest goal ever scored in the World Cup. The 122nd minute. “Oh my God,” we both said.

  “I don’t get how that just happened,” Abby said of the match. “I just kept saying ‘One chance.’ That’s all we need.”

  On the ESPN set, we finally had a chance to see the highlights, every crazy thing that happened in the game. We couldn’t believe the roller coaster we had just been on. “Everything was against us,” I told host Bob Ley. “This team has something special. We found a way to win.”

  It was inevitable that 2007 would come up. How, Ley asked, did we put the divisions behind us? Perhaps, he wondered, there were even tensions between the two of us? We both just smiled. “Pia came in and changed the dynamics of the team,” I said. “And to be honest, we grew up. We threw our differences out the window and learned to respect one another off and on the field.”

  Abby said, “I’d rather have no other person in goal behind me; this woman saves sure goals. Hope’s the best goalkeeper in the world. I’d rather have no one else behind me.”

  AFTER WE LEFT the set, we went to a late dinner with our family and friends, buzzing with excitement. We watched the replays—amazed at Rapinoe’s laser-like cross finding Abby’s head. We jeered the referee and her double penalty kick.

  Late that night, Adrian and I wandered the cobblestone streets of Dresden in the rain. The city glistened. It was the perfect place to celebrate all that Adrian and I had gone through together, and what the team had accomplished. Adrian kept reminding me to enjoy the night—my instinct was to leap forward to the semifinal game, but Adrian wouldn’t let me. He told me how much emotion there was in the stands—the fans praying, how he had prayed to his father, held his dad’s necklace, asking him to “let Hope have her moment.”

  “That was one of the greatest sporting events in history,” he said, intense and almost in tears. “Don’t ever forget that.”

  The next morning, my teammates and I ate breakfast silently. We knew it was time to turn the page. We had to play France in the semifinal in just two days. But when I made eye contact with Megan Rapinoe, she started laughing and I said, “That was crazy, huh?”

  It was crazy. Abby and I were on Good Morning America the next day. Some American journalists who hadn’t been in Germany flew in to write stories about the most talked about sports team on the planet. Everyone was calling the Brazil game the greatest moment for women’s soccer since the 1999 World Cup, and the overnight television ratings were the best since that epic tournament. The comparisons were inevitable, I guess—a thrilling game that ended in penalty kicks, capturing the attention of the country—and having so many of the ’99ers in Germany working for ESPN made the connection easy. But we were all weary of the comparisons. “That’s all we’ve ever heard about,” I told reporters. “And we all know that they paved the way. But at some point in time you have to let go and build new stories and new names to the game. I think if there’s any team to do it, it’s this team. . . . We’re not here to win because they did it twelve years ago. We’re here to win for our country, for our team, for all the work we’ve put in. So all this stuff about ’99—their journey was great—but that was twelve years ago.” Though forces kept trying to pull us back, we finally stepped out of the shad
ow of the past.

  II.

  Our semifinal game against France was my hundredth cap: one hundred games for the national team since that first one in the spring of 2000, when I played against Iceland as an eighteen-year-old college freshman. Now I was two weeks away from my thirtieth birthday, my shoulder full of scar tissue and metal and pain. I was now a veteran.

  Customarily, a player’s hundredth cap is a big deal, something to be saluted with a ceremony, but I asked the staff not to even mention it: this game didn’t need any personal tributes; it was a World Cup semifinal. We needed to focus completely on France, one of the surprise teams of the tournament. France was coming into the game on an extra day of rest—while we had played an extra hour against Brazil. Our legs were shot. We spent the little time we had in Mönchengladbach trying to rejuvenate our legs and study France, a team we hadn’t played in five years.

  The night before the game, my goalkeeper coach, Paul, told me he wanted me to go over film with him. To my surprise, after we sat down in front of the screen to watch video, all my teammates entered the room. Paul started the film: it was a compilation he had put together of almost every one of my hundred games. It was hilarious—different uniforms, my hair changing color as the years passed. My teammates applauded and laughed and gave me cards with their handwritten tributes. The compilation ended, of course, with the Brazil game. Everyone cheered. I was touched. It was a beautiful gift. It had taken me eleven long years to get to one hundred—only the second goalkeeper in history, along with Bri, to achieve that mark. It was worth the wait to earn the honor with this team. My team.

  It occurred to me later how much had changed in four years. The night before the 2007 semifinal game, I had been exiled. In Germany, I celebrated.

  III.

  France was all over us on that rainy Wednesday night. We got an early goal on a cross from Lauren Cheney that Heather O’Reilly tapped in, but France was relentless, connecting passes and unafraid to shoot. Our defense was constantly challenged; Becky Sauerbrunn was in as a replacement for Buehler, who couldn’t play because of the red card.

  France tied the game in the second half, when I came out for a cross that Sonia Bompastor looped in toward a runner; I was expecting a header, but the runner leaped over the ball, and it slipped into the right side of the net. France continued to dominate possession. Alex Morgan came in for Amy Rodriguez immediately after France tied the game, and was aggressive right away. She almost scored but was called offside on the play. Still France kept pushing forward; a berth in the World Cup final was twelve minutes away. And then Abby’s forehead came to the rescue again. Lauren Cheney sent a corner to the far post and Abby rose up above everyone—I could see her elevate from my end of the field—and hammered the ball into the net.

  Moments later, Alex, our rookie, scored her first World Cup goal, lifting the ball over the French goalkeeper who had slipped to the ground, to give us a 3–1 lead. A few minutes later, the victory was complete. We were in the World Cup final for the first time since 1999.

  IV.

  We drove by bus to Frankfurt, the site of the final. We tried to recover our legs and relax a little. We goofed around, playing soccer tennis. I did very little in training. The pain in my shoulder was getting worse and worse, and I went through hours of treatment between games. On the practice field, I couldn’t dive. I did everything I could to save myself for the competition. And every night I had to take a heavy dose of painkillers to get to sleep. I was taking a series of shots to prepare for games, something that needed to be scheduled and planned: cortisone, Synvisc, Toradol. Every time the long needle plunged deep into my joint there was searing pain followed by brief relief.

  We knew Japan well. We had played them three times in 2011. A lot was being made of our 22–0–3 record against them, but we had suffered our first losses to Mexico and to England in recent months, so we knew all streaks eventually end. Japan’s history in the World Cup wasn’t impressive: they had won only three games, and had escaped group play just once, in 1995. But they finished fourth in the Beijing Olympics after losing to us in the semifinals, and they had continued to improve. They were a speedy, high-energy, ball-possession team—Homare Sawa was a legend in Japan, and they had other smart, dangerous players, including my good friend Aya Miyama.

  We also knew that they were playing at an emotional level that we couldn’t comprehend. The wounds from the March 9.0 earthquake and devastating tsunami in Japan hadn’t even begun to heal: the dead—upward of fifteen thousand—were still being counted, and thousands more were missing. After the disaster, I tried for days to reach Aya, who was from one of the areas that suffered heavy damage. The country had rallied behind their gutsy women’s team, which—playing on the other side of the world—was showing a new tenacity. Japan had knocked off Germany, the host, and Sweden on its way to the finals. There was a lot of talk in the press about how much adversity our U.S. team had fought through on the way to the final, that we seemed to be a team of destiny. But there was another team in the final that had a much stronger claim to such stirring descriptions.

  The night before the final, I received an e-mail from Aya, wishing me luck. Normally, I would never respond to a message from an opponent, but I knew these were moments we would never get back. It felt right to honor a person I respected so much, who competed so hard.

  Aya,

  Let’s enjoy this moment no matter what happens.

  Hope.

  Later that night, my phone buzzed. I had a text from my brother David. He wished me luck. He said he missed me. “I will be a better brother,” he wrote.

  I hadn’t seen David in almost two years. We talked on the phone once or twice a year. His text meant a lot to me—one more part of my support team falling in place. I could feel my dad’s spirit inside of me. And now my oldest brother was texting me.

  “And I will be a better sister,” I texted back. “I love you.”

  V.

  Inside the stadium, fifty thousand people greeted us, many of them holding signs and waving American flags. There were several Star Wars–inspired tributes to me—HANDS SOLO and THE FORCE IS WITH YOU, SOLO. Another sign read: MARRY ME HOPE, I’M SOLO. Eight fans held aloft giant letters spelling out my name. Some people wore replicas of my big white goalie gloves. Even President Barack Obama sent out a tweet to our team that morning: “Sorry I can’t be there to see you play, but I’ll be cheering you on from here. Let’s go.”

  It felt like our day from the start. I had little to do early on and watched my teammates get chance after chance: Lauren Cheney, Rapinoe, Carli, Abby. But the shots went wide. They went high. Rapinoe hit the post. Abby hit the crossbar. We were dominating possession, but nothing was going in, and we were tied at halftime. Finally, in the sixty-ninth minute, Alex Morgan broke the drought. We were twenty minutes away from winning the World Cup. We needed to stay strong. But falling behind seemed to energize Japan. When one of our defenders slipped attempting to clear the ball, my old pal Aya made us pay, banging a shot past me to tie the game in the eightieth minute.

  Nothing came easy in this World Cup. So of course regulation ended in a tie, and we headed to overtime. In the 104th minute, Alex sent a cross directly to Abby’s forehead, and she slammed the ball in. We had a 2–1 lead in overtime with the World Cup on the line. But who knew better than us that teams can come back in overtime? Early in the second extra-time period, I collided with Yukari Kinga and cut my knee badly. I knew my knee was messed up and I lay on the ground, while our trainer ran out on the field to make sure that I was okay. As I lay there, it occurred to me that I could stay down awhile and waste some time, but as soon as the thought entered my mind, I pushed it away. I wanted to keep fighting, to close out the victory, right away. I didn’t want to resort to a Brazilian-type tactic to kill the clock. I had too much respect for Japan to do that. I could tough it out.

  We cleared the ball behind our goal setting up a
corner. I was down for a few minutes and felt the air going out of the team. I didn’t have time to organize the defense for the corner kick. Thirty-two-year-old Sawa redirected the kick, which glanced off of Abby and into the net. Tied again. Twice Japan had fallen behind and faced defeat and twice the team had rallied back. The momentum had shifted. Destiny seemed to have switched sides.

  The game went to penalty kicks. Our long World Cup road was almost at an end. I knew how psychologically hard it was for a team to win two games in one tournament on PKs. Japan had already seen us take kicks against Brazil just a week earlier; they had film to study. We didn’t have such an advantage.

  It didn’t go well from the start. Boxxy shot first but Japan’s goalkeeper, Ayumi Kaihori, made a kick save.

  Aya made her penalty kick to put Japan up 1–0.

  Carli sent her shot high over the crossbar.

  I made a save on Yuki Nagasato, diving to my right.

  Tobin Heath’s shot was saved by Kaihori. We still hadn’t converted a penalty kick.

  Mizuho Sakaguchi made her shot, and Japan had a 2–0 lead. One more converted penalty kick by Japan, and the game would be over.

  Abby made her penalty kick to cut it to 2–1.

  When Saki Kumagai sent the ball high over my right shoulder, above my outstretched hand, Japan had won the World Cup. They ran to each other as we watched in shock. They jumped and cried, and confetti poured from the rafters. They unfurled a sign, TO OUR FRIENDS AROUND THE WORLD—THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT. I walked over to the stands, as I always do, to where my friends and family sat. I wanted to thank them for supporting me and to see the love in their faces. We had done everything we could and played in an unforgettable World Cup. The feeling after the loss was so different than it had been in 2007; it was painful but we weren’t crushed. It was pain that came with an honest, honorable defeat. Aya came up to me on the field. She wasn’t celebrating. “I don’t want to celebrate while you are hurting,” she told me.