The Shady Side Of Hope Solo

During a U.S. team match with Brazil in 2007, the American coach started veteran goalie Briana Scurry instead of Hope Solo. Scurry had a bad match, and Brazil ran away with the game in a 4-0 win over the United States. Solo was unable to keep her frustration under wraps, and launched a tirade against the coach and her teammate. 

"There's no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves," she said. "And the fact of the matter is, it's not 2004 anymore ... 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 in the Olympics three years ago." 

Solo's verbal attack on her coach and former Olympian Scurry earned her a temporary suspension from the team. Her teammates even shunned her from the flight home, but Solo stood by her comments nearly a year later when talking about the incident with The New York Times. She said part of the issue was that she was also dealing with the recent passing of her father, who died three months earlier. "My emotions were in a place I never experienced before, that hurt, pain, anger," Solo said, adding, "I'm not saying it was right, but I know it was something I had to do at the time."

During the 2012 summer Olympics in London, Hope Solo raised eyebrows when she went on the record about the sex, drinking, and other debauchery that happens inside the Olympic Village. She told quite the wild tale to ESPN magazine: "I've seen people having sex right out in the open. On the grass, between buildings, people are getting down and dirty." 

Solo also admitted to sneaking celebrities and other non-Olympians into the Village after-hours and to going on live TV still drunk from the night before. "When we were done partying, we got out of our nice dresses, got back into our stadium coats and, at 7 a.m. with no sleep, went on the Today show drunk. Needless to say, we looked like hell." 

The Olympic Village shenanigans weren't Solo's first taste of the wild life. In her memoir, Solo: A Memoir of Hope, she wrote that during a six-month training camp in California in 2006, she routinely drove to Vegas where she would "party all night, and come back to training without having slept." She added, "And I dated dozens of men, often several at a time." Alrighty. 

Perhaps the most widely-publicized shady moment of Hope's career was her 2014 arrest on domestic violence charges stemming from a drunken brawl with her nephew and half-sister. According to ESPN, Solo verbally lashed out at her teenage nephew, calling him too "fat, unathletic and crazy" to be an athlete, before physically attacking him and her half-sister.

At the police station, while cops were trying to book her into jail, ESPN said Solo "was so combative that she had to be forced to the ground, prompting her to yell at one officer, "You're such a b***h. You're scared of me because you know that if the handcuffs were off, I'd kick your a**." When asked by an officer to remove a necklace, Solo reportedly "told the officer that the piece of jewelry was worth more than he made in a year."

In a subsequent interview with Good Morning America, Solo portrayed herself as the victim of domestic violence. The case was dismissed on procedural grounds in January 2015, but that decision was successfully appealed and charges were reinstated in October 2015.  Cut to 2018 and TMZ reports that prosecutors once again dropped the case after "key witnesses stopped cooperating." But Solo didn't leave it there, vowing to "explore any and all legal remedies to hold those with no regard for the truth, fully accountable." She also slammed prosecutors as negligent and claimed they had "errant motivations" from the outset of the case. 

Hope Solo loves to play mind games with players on the opposing team, especially during penalty kicks. While any goalkeeper tries their best to get into the head of the kicker, Solo admits to sometimes stalling the kick as long as possible — almost to the point of impropriety. 

In one incident during a 2015 match between the United States and Germany, Solo wasted a lot of time pointing to the referees and her teammates, then taking a long drink of water and even pouring some down her neck. The tactic worked: the kicker pulled the shot wide, giving the Americans a shut-out.

This is actually not an uncommon practice, and according to WFAA 8, Solo attempted the maneuver again during the U.S. team's stunning loss to Sweden at the Rio Olympics in 2016. This time, her move was to call a time out and request a new pair of gloves, a blatant attempt to ice the penalty kicker, but the tactic failed and the United States women's national team lost in a defeat that marked "the earliest exit it had ever made in a major tournament — spanning back seven World Cups and six Olympics." 

The loss had to sting, particularly for the ultra-competitive Solo, who later responded to Sweden's gameplay in the tournament in terms that would ultimately derail her career.

In 2012, Hope Solo took to her preferred insult battleground, Twitter, to take former Olympian turned commentator Brandi Chastain to task. At issue was Chastain's rather light criticism of Solo's teammate, Rachel Buehler, during an Olympic match between the United States and Columbia. 

"As a defender, your responsibilities are to defend ... win the ball, and then keep possession. And that's something that Rachel Buehler actually needs to improve on in this tournament," Chastain said during the broadcast of the game.

Solo hit back with a remarkably vicious response, tweeting, "Lay off commentating about defending and gking until you get more educated @brandichastain the game has changed from a decade ago." And she didn't stop there. A half hour later, she fired off a second tweet, seemingly accusing Chastain of dampening the "spirit of the Olympics" with her commentary.

Chastain's official response was "no comment," but Solo continued to chastise Chastain a few weeks later when she told the New York Daily News, "I think analysts and commentators should bring energy and excitement and passion for the game, and a lot of knowledge, and I think it's important to help build the game, and I don't think Brandi has that."

Chastain's single, tempered response to Solo's barrage of attacks was when she told Us Weekly, "My only comment is I am in London to cover women's soccer for NBC in an honest and objective fashion, and that is what I have done, and will continue to do for the rest of the tournament."