Written by Steve Buckley at Boston Herald.com
Hope Solo is an enormously talented athlete who knows her way around a soccer pitch. She also knows her way around Madison Avenue when asked to pitch products.
According to her Wikipedia page, she has participated in endorsement deals with Simple Skincare, Gatorade and BlackBerry. In a “Make Yourself” commercial for Nike, she says, “I have so much passion, so much love, so much desire, to be the best.” She’s made an appearance in one of those clever “This is SportsCenter” spots.
And why not? She’s just about the best female soccer goaltender in the world. She’s attractive. And when she actually stops to think about what she’s saying, Hope Solo is well-spoken.
It’s that last part — thinking about what she’s saying — that has gotten her into trouble again. As the whole world knows by now, the aptly-named Solo has made a colossal fool of herself — and, by extension, damaged the reputation of the U.S. women’s soccer team — by getting it out there that the Swedish team is “a bunch of cowards.”
Solo was in the nets Friday when the U.S. was eliminated by Sweden on penalty kicks after the teams had played to a 1-1 tie in regulation and extra time. As we’ve learned a million times, it’s always bad form to cast yourself as “the better team” following a crushing defeat, a painful lesson Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart learned in 2002 following his team’s loss to the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game.
Remember that one?
“Sometimes, the best team doesn’t win,” he said, after Drew Bledsoe had come off the bench to replace an injured Tom Brady in the Pats’ 24-17 victory. “That’s just the way it is. We know we’re a good team. We know we should have won today, but they outplayed us today.”
Stewart took a lot of criticism for that one, even though he had readily conceded that the Pats had “outplayed us today.”
As for Hope Solo, here are some of her comments following the loss to Sweden:
“We played a creative game,” she said. “We had many opportunities on goal. We showed a lot of heart. We came back from a goal down. I’m very proud of this team.”
But . . .
“We played a bunch of cowards,” she said. “The best team did not win today. I strongly, firmly believe that.”
She continued.
“Sweden dropped back,” she said. “They didn’t want to open play. They didn’t want to pass the ball around. They didn’t want to play great soccer, entertaining soccer. It was a combative game. A physical game. Exactly what they wanted. Exactly what their game plan was. We had that style of play when Pia (Sundhage) was our coach. I think it was very cowardly. But they won, they’re moving on. And we’re going home.”
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