Hope Solo calls victorious Sweden “cowards” after U.S. women’s worst ever tournament finish

by Brooks Peck

The U.S. women’s team lost to Sweden and former coach Pia Sundhage in the Olympic quarterfinals, marking the team’s worst ever tournament finish and the first time they have failed to medal at the Olympics. After losing the decisive shootout 4-3 on unlikely misses from Alex Morgan and Christen Press, goalkeeper Hope Solo decided the best course of action was to insult Sweden by calling them cowards.

This is incredibly rich given that Solo stalled before Sweden’s last spotkick by unnecessarily changing her gloves — much to the amusement of Lisa Dahlkvist, who went on to score and end the game.

Sweden opened the scoring in the 61st minute with a well executed goal on the counter and Alex Morgan 77th-minute equalizer was more a product of a Sweden mistake than the U.S.’s skill. In extra time, Carli Lloyd had a goal rightly disallowed for a foul on the defender just before scoring and Sweden immediately had a goal wrongly disallowed at the other end for a terrible offside call.

If we’re being generous, we could say that Hope Solo purposefully made an inflammatory statement to take the attention off from her teammates who missed their penalties, but given Solo’s history, this seems more like a case of Hope being Hope. That said, Sundhage isn’t too worried about it.

3 comments

  1. Jennifer says:

    Hope Solo continues to be an embarrassment to her team, to her country and to women everywhere. Pia Sundhage’s reply to her idiotic statement says it all. Go home, Hope, and learn a little class.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.