So here we go again, and of course U.S. Soccer knew full well what it was getting when officials welcomed back Hope Solo into the fold this spring. It was a straight-out, one-for-one deal. The Americans got Solo’s enormous, proven talents in goal, and in exchange they would put up with all the nonsense that goes with that.
If the U.S. team had a viable alternative at this crucial position, you better believe that it would have ditched Solo long ago. But Ashlyn Harris has no World Cup experience and Alyssa Naeher hasn’t even seen any action with the national team this year. Neither one can come off her line with the same assurance. Neither one can intimidate penalty takers the way that Solo does; making herself big and mean when facing the spot.
What all this means is that Jill Ellis and her players will handle again the latest distraction, with a new battery of questions, on the eve of the team’s first World Cup match Monday against Australia. And they will do so because it is part of a plan.
That plan, ambitious but simple enough, works like this: Win the World Cup with Solo in goal, then see what happens next before deciding whether to bring Solo to Rio for the Olympics next summer. And then, rest assured, Solo’s participation on the national team will end no later than Brazil. She may well be voted into the Soccer Hall of Fame, but there will be few warm, heartfelt hugs when Solo departs.
This latest development — the leak of police records and depositions to ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” — likely wouldn’t have happened if Solo had just appeared somewhat publicly contrite about what happened last June 20 at her half-sister’s house. A fracas there resulted in a misdemeanor domestic violence charge and then the eventual dismissal of that charge by a Kirkland, Wash., municipal court judge on procedural grounds. Basically, her nephew and half-sister didn’t appear in court or submit the necessary depositions for the prosecutor to press the case. But now, apparently at the family’s urging, the prosecutor is revisiting the case and its status will be reconsidered shortly after the World Cup.
That timing is just fine with U.S. Soccer, which would have been forced this past winter to banish Solo from this tournament if she had been found guilty, or pleaded no contest. Now the games can continue, Solo will make the big saves, and then everyone will see what happens next. Maybe Harris will be ready and more formidable for the Rio Olympics, in any case.
Jordan Stead/APHope Solo, left, and her husband, former Seattle Seahawks football player Jerramy Stevens leave Kirkland Municipal Court on Nov. 4, 2014.
The apparent lesson in all this is that Solo has not learned her lesson. She remains an articulate charmer; a self-destructive aggressor. When she should have swallowed her tongue or admitted to at least some serious misjudgments, Solo instead went on “Good Morning America” and portrayed herself as a victim in this domestic violence case. It is the same thing she did recently during an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“The court case with my family was very difficult to go through. I don’t think anybody really understands what that was like,” Solo told the Post-Dispatch. “For me, for my husband, for my family, I did everything I could to show up and be a professional on the soccer field, but I was filled with a lot of emotions. It was a public embarrassment, betrayals by family members. It was horrible. It was awful. My heart was broken.”
“Betrayals by family” is the key phrase there, and you can imagine how it struck Teresa Obert, her half-sister, who has decided to go public. Solo now tells reporters she is in Canada to play soccer at the World Cup, not to discuss domestic matters. Unfortunately, those matters will dog her for some time, and eventually shorten her tenure with the national team.
It’s just a matter of time before U.S. Soccer cuts the cord. After the World Cup? After the Rio Olympics? For now, everyone waits and wonders: Can the woman who can’t handle her alcohol, handle the crosses in front of her line?