Tag: hope solo

us soccer

USSF election: The final questions (cue Europe keyboard riff)

Posted on by Beau Dure

With one week to go in the election, we’re all talking about many things.

who-killedNot many of those things have anything to do with ideas or qualifications or anything like that. It’s mostly screaming that if (Kathy Carter, Eric Wynalda, anyone but Wynalda) is elected, we should all move to Canada or Mexico. Or it’s a bunch of rumors of shady politics.

So my goal in soliciting questions to pose to the candidates in the final week was simple. Let’s take advantage of this opportunity to talk about issues and so forth. We were doing that for a while, and then we just … stopped.

I didn’t get much response. Perhaps I should’ve included a truck portraying Kyle Martino and Hope Solo as Kang and Kodos. But a couple of people did get in touch, and so I’ve added their questions to the list below.

I will contact each campaign to see if they can give some answers. Each candidate’s answers will be a separate blog post.

Don’t hold it against a candidate if he/she doesn’t respond. We’ve got a week to go, and they’re surely on the phone nonstop with actual voters right now. But I’ll make an effort.

Here goes …

ALL CANDIDATES

Paralympics

  1. What will you do to work with the 7-a-side program (for athletes with cerebral palsy or brain injury) while it’s not part of the Paralympic Games program?
  2. Can anything be done to start a 5-a-side program for visually impaired athletes, a sport that is in the Paralympic Games? Have you already had conversations with athletes about doing this?

Futsal

  1. Most conversations about futsal in this campaign have focused on using it as a youth development tool. But we have a men’s national team and a couple of budding pro leagues. What’s the next step for building out the game at the elite level?

NWSL 

  1. Name three things that can be done to improve the women’s league.

Women’s national team

  1. Will you try to negotiate both the MNT and WNT collective bargaining agreements at the same time?
  2. Hypothetical: You’re negotiating with the WNT. They ask for 24 players to be put on full-time salary with restrictions on the number of “floaters” who can come into camp. The coaching staff has warned that they need flexibility to call in players who are impressing in the NWSL and Europe. What’s your next move?
  3. Should (or could?) U.S. Soccer put the women’s national team’s media rights under a different contract than the MNT/SUM contract so we can see exactly how much revenue the WNT is generating?

Youth soccer

  1. Hypothetical: Let’s say the state associations, backed by a national movement of parents and coaches, ask USSF to standardize leagues throughout the country, folding the Development Academy and other elite leagues into a clearly defined pyramid with promotion/relegation and more local play (less travel). U.S. Club Soccer, predictably, gets very upset. What’s your next move?
  2. Will you tell Development Academy clubs to let their players play high school soccer? Do you see any sort of compromise (say, letting kids play their junior and senior years)?

Open Cup 

  1. Hypothetical: You’re trying to sell the Open Cup as a separate TV property. The best bid you have is from an online streaming service that just launched a year ago. They’re offering four times as much as any traditional broadcaster. What’s your next move?
  2. Should the Open Cup run a fall-to-spring schedule that isn’t tied to the summer leagues (NPSL, PDL). If so, would you favor a separate Summer Open Cup for those leagues?

Promotion/relegation 

  1. Would you be open to a modified promotion/relegation system in which clubs can’t be relegated below a specific floor (for “major” clubs, D2; for other fully professional clubs, D3)?
  2. Hypothetical: You get a conglomeration of leagues to agree to set up a pyramid. MLS says it will not participate. The top league in your pyramid applies for D1. The task force recommends approval. MLS lawyers up. What’s your next move?

The team that didn’t qualify for the World Cup, causing Earth’s magnetic poles to reverse

  1. Was hiring Bruce Arena a smart decision?
  2. Did you support the decision at the time?
  3. Do you believe that Bruce Arena should be hired again for some other role by US Soccer?

ERIC WYNALDA

  1. Some lawyers and others with experience in the nonprofit world and with NGBs are skeptical of your idea to turn USSF into a lending bank. How would you respond?
  2. Will you please, please stop saying “international calendar” in reference to the fall-to-spring calendar that isn’t used in half the world? (Sorry, pet peeve of mine.)

HOPE SOLO

  1. Where did you hear the incorrect statement that U.S. Soccer coaching licenses are not age appropriate? (The purpose of this question is to find out where she’s getting misinformation like this and whether she has taken steps to find better sources of info.)
  2. If you win the presidency, you will be in the position of defending the federation against a grievance you filed. What’s your next move?

KYLE MARTINO 

  1. In your Progress Plan, why would any club created after 2024 be “non-league”? What happens if we have major demographic and climate shifts?
  2. Why move all of U.S. Soccer to New York and not just have a satellite office?

CARLOS CORDEIRO

  1. You’ve demonstrated a reluctance to do interviews. How will you adapt to the role of president, when you be required to do many press conferences?
  2. Why hasn’t U.S. Soccer released its Form 990 and audited financials for the year ending March 31, 2017?

KATHY CARTER

  1. Is it a conflict of interest to have the head of SUM, Don Garber, serving on the Board as long as it’s been in its current (15-member) configuration AND serving as the chairperson of the Nominating and Governance Committee? If not, why not?
  2. What happened to SUM’s site? It’s now redirected to a page on the quasi-independent MLSSoccer.com.
  3. Would MLS expansion fees be cheaper if new owners did not get a share of SUM? Is there any way to untangle that relationship?
  4. Would MLS be in good shape, financially (either profitable or running a loss only because it’s investing in future growth), if it were separated from SUM?
  5. Plenty of people who understand how SUM helped save professional soccer in 2002 question whether it’s still necessary in its current form (co-mingled with MLS) today. How would you respond?

MIKE WINOGRAD

  1. The plan to build a physical training center in each state sounds costly. Some state associations already have similar facilities. Would you simply cooperate with the state to share the space? In general, how would you pay for this plan?

 

1
pro soccer, us soccer, women's soccer, youth soccer

U.S. Soccer presidential election: Last call for questions

Posted on by Beau Dure

In one week, U.S. Soccer members — from big-shot board members to little-known delegates from far-flung state associations — will descend upon a hotel just outside Disney World and Sea World. They’ll have two days of preliminary meetings and a welcome event at Hollywood Studios. (I have not yet inquired about Fastpasses for Toy Story Mania.)

questions-flipThen on Saturday, it’s the Big Vote. Eight candidates enter. One takes over the presidency from Sunil Gulati.

And we still have so many questions left unanswered. So many ideas that haven’t been fully vetted. So many vague statements.

So let’s come up with a list of questions — some for all candidates, some for specific candidates. Then I’ll see if I can get them answered.

You can leave them as comments here. You can email me. You can hit me up on Twitter.

Here are a few to get us started:

ALL CANDIDATES

Paralympics

  1. What will you do to work with the 7-a-side program (for athletes with cerebral palsy or brain injury) while it’s not part of the Paralympic Games program?
  2. Can anything be done to start a 5-a-side program for visually impaired athletes, a sport that is in the Paralympic Games? Have you already had conversations with athletes about doing this?

Futsal

  1. Most conversations about futsal in this campaign have focused on using it as a youth development tool. But we have a men’s national team and a couple of budding pro leagues. What’s the next step for building out the game at the elite level?

NWSL 

  1. Name three things that can be done to improve the women’s league.

Women’s national team

  1. Will you try to negotiate both the MNT and WNT collective bargaining agreements at the same time?
  2. Hypothetical: You’re negotiating with the WNT. They ask for 24 players to be put on full-time salary with restrictions on the number of “floaters” who can come into camp. The coaching staff has warned that they need flexibility to call in players who are impressing in the NWSL and Europe. What’s your next move?

Youth soccer

  1. Hypothetical: Let’s say the state associations, backed by a national movement of parents and coaches, ask USSF to standardize leagues throughout the country, folding the Development Academy and other elite leagues into a clearly defined pyramid with promotion/relegation and more local play (less travel). U.S. Club Soccer, predictably, gets very upset. What’s your next move?
  2. Will you tell Development Academy clubs to let their players play high school soccer? Do you see any sort of compromise (say, letting kids play their junior and senior years)?

Open Cup 

  1. Hypothetical: You’re trying to sell the Open Cup as a separate TV property. The best bid you have is from an online streaming service that just launched a year ago. They’re offering four times as much as any traditional broadcaster. What’s your next move?
  2. NEW! Should the Open Cup run a fall-to-spring schedule that isn’t tied to the summer leagues (NPSL, PDL). If so, would you favor a separate Summer Open Cup for those leagues?

Promotion/relegation 

  1. Would you be open to a modified promotion/relegation system in which clubs can’t be relegated below a specific floor (for “major” clubs, D2; for other fully professional clubs, D3)?
  2. Hypothetical: You get a conglomeration of leagues to agree to set up a pyramid. MLS says it will not participate. The top league in your pyramid applies for D1. The task force recommends approval. MLS lawyers up. What’s your next move?

ERIC WYNALDA

  1. Some lawyers and others with experience in the nonprofit world and with NGBs are skeptical of your idea to turn USSF into a lending bank. How would you respond?
  2. Will you please, please stop saying “international calendar” in reference to the fall-to-spring calendar that isn’t used in half the world? (Sorry, pet peeve of mine.)

HOPE SOLO

  1. Where did you hear the incorrect statement that U.S. Soccer coaching licenses are not age appropriate? (The purpose of this question is to find out where she’s getting misinformation like this and whether she has taken steps to find better sources of info.)
  2. If you win the presidency, you will be in the position of defending the federation against a grievance you filed. What’s your next move?

KYLE MARTINO 

  1. In your Progress Plan, why would any club created after 2024 be “non-league”? What happens if we have major demographic and climate shifts?
  2. Why move all of U.S. Soccer to New York and not just have a satellite office?

CARLOS CORDEIRO

  1. You’ve demonstrated a reluctance to do interviews. How will you adapt to the role of president, when you be required to do many press conferences?

KATHY CARTER

  1. Is it a conflict of interest to have the head of SUM, Don Garber, serving on the Board as long as it’s been in its current (15-member) configuration AND serving as the chairperson of the Nominating and Governance Committee? If not, why not?
  2. What happened to SUM’s site? It’s now redirected to a page on the quasi-independent MLSSoccer.com.
  3. Would MLS expansion fees be cheaper if new owners did not get a share of SUM? Is there any way to untangle that relationship?
  4. Would MLS be in good shape, financially (either profitable or running a loss only because it’s investing in future growth), if it were separated from SUM?
  5. Plenty of people who understand how SUM helped save professional soccer in 2002 question whether it’s still necessary in its current form (co-mingled with MLS) today. How would you respond?

Anything else?

 

1
podcast, us soccer, youth soccer

RSD26: Charles Boehm on the U.S. Soccer election and youth soccer

Posted on by Beau Dure

This week’s guest, Charles Boehm, is a player, coach, referee and writer — check out his intro at the 2:45 mark and learned where he played alongside future non-U.S. national teamers. Like me, he was in Philadelphia for the United Soccer Coaches convention and attended many of the U.S. Soccer presidential candidates’ sessions.

We talk about what makes a soccer person and what makes an elitist (5:30), whether Eric Wynalda is the front-runner (8:00), the “anyone but (so-and-so)” approach to voting (9:45), what the candidates showed us in Philly (13:05), Kathy Carter and Soccer United Marketing (24:10), what’s changing in U.S. Soccer (30:00-ish), then youth soccer and the surprising focus on ODP (38:15).

I didn’t get around to finishing my thought on why I was once the best U12 center back in Athens, Ga. The answer is the same reason why I was once a competent over-30 coed indoor goalkeeper: Reckless disregard for my own safety. It surely had nothing to my skill. It also had a lot to do with the fact that not many kids played soccer and even fewer wanted to play defense.

2
podcast, us soccer

All the USSF president’s men (part 1 of RSD23 podcast)

Posted on by Beau Dure

The nomination deadline has passed, and we still don’t really know how many candidates will officially run for U.S. Soccer president. Current educated guess is eight, but at least three are unconfirmed.

This morning, I chatted with Jason Davis on SiriusXM’s United States of Soccer. The interview is now available on demand on the SiriusXM site. Highlights:

  • 1:30 – How many nominees? We go through individually.
  • 5:00 – Who can nominate, anyway?
  • 6:25 – Conspiracy theories — separating the ludicrous from the rational, especially in terms of Soccer United Marketing and Major League Soccer.
  • 8:33 – The Nominating and Governance Committee: Too much influence for Garber and Gulati?
  • 14:00 – Has SUM lost control of things?
  • 15:30 – The Steven Gans letter

And the election accounts for the first 15 minutes of the Dec. 13 podcast …

  • 4:30 – Why it’s important that the rest of the election is in the hands of the Credentials Committee, not the Nomination and Governance Committee. No, really. It’s about SUM.
  • 6:00 – The positives of SUM (historically), segueing quickly into what looks quite bad right now.
  • 8:10 – The establishment candidate (Kathy Carter)
  • 9:15 – Why the delay in USSF announcing the final field?
  • 10:10 – The adult soccer associations are leaning toward …
  • 12:30 – Yeah, somehow this segued into pro/rel and how we can do it better than Europe
  • 13:10 – Summing up the field and how they all have something to say.

The second part of the podcast is on the Soccer Parenting Summit. See the next post tonight or tomorrow or whenever I thaw out from another trek outside. Listen:

 

0
women's soccer

A brief Hope Solo court update

Posted on by Beau Dure

On Thursday, Hope Solo’s assault case will be officially remanded to the trial court, Kirkland Municipal Court … unless Solo’s counsel decides to appeal again.

That’s the upshot of the stack of paper I managed to procure and have shipped cross-country to me in an effort to figure out the status of her case. Two words, court system: Electronic records. Please.

I reached out to Solo’s two listed lawyers to ask whether they would once again seek a review in the state’s Court of Appeals. They did not answer.

But barring a successful review of the review of the appeal of the case being reinstated, Solo will be in court sometime in … 2017? Maybe?

The irony here is that Solo’s counsel got the case thrown out at one point because a judge sympathized with the argument that she shouldn’t have to choose between due process (adequately questioning all the witnesses) and a speedy trial, and now the case has dragged out far longer than it should have. The primary delaying force, though, is simple bad luck. Solo’s lawyers have had several valid reasons to delay the case — you’d have to be rather heartless to deny a motion for an extension to a lawyer whose wife was just diagnosed with breast cancer.

Here’s how we reached this point.

June 21, 2014: Solo is arrested on charges of fourth-degree assault after an incident with her half-sister, Teresa Obert, and nephew, identified in court papers as C.O. because he was a minor at the time. ESPN reports in October 2015 that she was belligerent toward arresting officers.

December 2014-January 2015: Several delays in the defense’s attempts to get depositions from Obert and C.O. One delay is procedural — do you need a subpoena or just a “notice of deposition” to compel someone to appear? When they are deposed, C.O. cites doctor-patient privilege in response to a couple of questions about his medical history and medication. On Dec. 30, the court orders Obert and C.O. to appear on Jan. 2; the response is “I don’t know if we can make that.” And they don’t. The court tries again Jan. 6 to get them to appear Jan. 8, but Obert’s husband says they’re out of the state. (All of this is reconstructed from the Court of Appeals ruling of July 7, 2016.)

Jan. 13, 2015: Kirkland Municipal Court judge dismisses charges against Solo. The factors are “pattern of the City’s witnesses’ failure to cooperate with defense interviews” and an amended witness list of Dec. 29. Solo’s counsel had said the new witnesses on the list had refused to talk.

Feb. 9, 2015: Kirkland lawyers file in King County Superior Court to reconsider the case. Again from the 7-7-2016 ruling: “The City argued that the trial court improperly conflated the City’s obligations with the witnesses’ conduct.”

The docket showing how the case proceeded in King County Superior Court has been intermittently available online.

Oct. 2, 2015: Superior Court Judge Douglass North reverses lower court’s decision, sends case back to lower court. The ruling, included as an appendix to an Oct. 29 filing I obtained, says North heard motion from Kirkland “to remand this case back to the trial court for an abuse of discretion under 8.3 and 4.7. IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that this case be remanded back to the trial court for a trial. Court finds there was an abuse of discretion.” More detail from the 7-7-16 filing: “The court reasoned that dismissal ‘requires willful or arbitrary action on the part of the government, not on the basis of the witnesses.’”

Oct. 29, 2015: Solo’s counsel asks state Court of Appeals for a discretionary review of North’s Oct. 2 decision. This docket report is online.

Nov. 6, 2015: Solo gets extension on filing full motion until Dec. 28. Reasons given: Todd Maybrown, Solo’s lawyer throughout this case, is prepping for the murder-for-hire trial of James Perry Henrikson. The legal team has added James Lobsenz, but he was not present at trial and is getting up to speed while he has six other appellate briefs due.

January 2016: Solo gets another extension to Jan. 15, but “no further extensions.” Three documents were filed through the month — presumably Solo’s motion (Jan. 12), then definitely Kirkland’s response to her motion (Jan. 22), then Solo’s response to Kirkland (Jan. 29). I don’t have these documents, but I have a Feb. 1 document about the dates in which they were all due.

March-May 2016: After some back and forth about whether the motion should be heard by oral argument, the motion was indeed heard May 27.

June 7, 2016: Solo’s motion for review is denied by Court of Appeals Commissioner Masako Kanazawa, whose ruling is “essentially upholding the superior court’s ruling,” according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The last paragraph of Kanazawa’s ruling (note: Solo is using her married name, Stevens, in this case):

solo-appeals-ruling

July 7: Kanazawa grants motion for extension of time to file a motion to modify until August 8. Counsel’s wife just learned she had breast cancer and needed surgery.

August 5: Solo’s motion to modify is filed. The basic idea: Please “modify” the ruling denying my discretionary review by entering a ruling granting discretionary review. Quite a modification — legalese is fun!

Solo’s counsel reiterates the delays in Obert and C.O.’s deposition but also hits the prosecution for adding four witnesses late in the process — two doctors, Jeffrey Obert and a Corey (or Cori, depending on the document) Parks, who lives in Florida. The motion says these witnesses have refused to be interviewed by defense.

Kirkland’s response, if it chose to file one, would be due August 15. The city decided not to respond. That’s confidence.

Oct. 4: Motion denied — there will be no modification of the ruling denying the motion for discretionary review. The order has three signatures with last names matching Court of Appeals judges Michael Spearman, Ronald Cox and Stephen Dwyer.

The cover letter sending the order to Kirkland and Solo counsel reads, “The order will become final unless counsel files a motion for discretionary review within thirty days from the date of this order.”

Nov. 3: The Court of Appeals docket says “Certificate of Finality: Due.”

Though, in this case, it would really be the beginning, sending the case back to trial court just as Solo makes plans to go to North Carolina (as stated in her Fullscreen documentary) or even overseas, as she recently hinted.

1
soccer

On the Women’s World Cup and Hope Solo, in that order

Posted on by Beau Dure

What a World Cup we’ve seen so far!

– Stunning upsets: Nigeria tying Sweden, Norway tying Germany (this isn’t 1995), and Colombia over France.

– Moments of brilliance: Colombian keeper Sandra Sepulveda, the sequence leading to Karla Villalobos’ equalizer for Costa Rica against South Korea, and this free kick from Norway’s Maren Mjelde that couldn’t have been placed any better if she stood at the post with a stepladder:

– Overwhelming media coverage: Fox has gone all out to demonstrate that the next several men’s and women’s World Cups will be in good hands. Former rights-holder ESPN is also ramped up, matching or even surpassing their coverage from 2011, when they sent people like me to Germany to ride the rails and cover as many games as possible.

But we’re only talking about Hope Solo, right? So says Nancy Armour at USA TODAY, and I’m sure she’s not alone.

Most of my small band of Twitter followers would disagree. I’d say you could exclude the MMA folks in that band of Twitter followers, but actually, you can’t:

But let’s go beyond the anecdotal and look at Google trends: On Friday, the top trend was Women’s World Cup at 500,000. Hope Solo was at 100,000, tied for fourth with Alex Morgan. Gotta get injury updates.

Ratings? They’re good. (TV ratings, that is. U.S. player ratings, not so much.)

So I hope this is just taken as the polite, constructive criticism I’m intending. And frankly, my old paper is doing a terrific job covering both Hope Solo AND the Cup. Which makes Armour’s piece that much stranger.

More interesting stuff from the Cup:

– Abby Wambach is blaming artificial turf for the lack of U.S. offense, particularly her own missed chances. Maybe that’s better than Stephen A. Smith joking about Germany failing to stop Norway’s free kick because the players worried about their hair.

Stories like that are why I love Twitter:

https://twitter.com/soundbylaura/status/610131894504697856

(Laura also has a blog with some pointed insights on the Cup, Solo, etc. That includes a Google Map of women’s teams in the USA.)

On a more serious note — if Wambach isn’t comfortable playing on turf, should she be playing at all in this tournament? If I’m Jill Ellis, I read that and think, “OK, thanks — I’ll go with someone else.”

– But if I’m Jill Ellis, I take Jeff Carlisle’s advice on fixing the offense. Play a dadgum winger on the wing rather than letting Tobin Heath, who can inject some skill and creativity into the attack, rot on the bench. Get Lauren Holiday out of defensive midfield before a good team runs her ragged in the semifinals.

– And finally, on Hope Solo: Look, we all know her version of events is always going to be a little skewed to make her look better. She’s pretty good at spinning — even today, some people look back at the 2007 Women’s World Cup and think she’s the victim, just as she’s claiming she’s the “victim” here in a domestic dispute that most likely has plenty of blame to spread around too all parties involved.

But simply based on the facts, Sunil Gulati simply demolished Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Even after the Outside the Lines report on Solo’s family fracas and her apparently obnoxious behavior afterwards, we still don’t know how much we can trust her accusers. Is U.S. Soccer supposed to bench her now? Why? Because a senator finds it easier to make Solo a scapegoat than to tackle the circumstances that lead families to fight?

Yeesh. When’s the next game?

0
soccer

Hope Solo and the timing of bad news: Q-and-EG

Posted on by Beau Dure

Questions and educated guesses on the Hope Solo situation:

Q. Why did ESPN air a piece on Hope Solo, with extensive comments from a family member with whom she fought, the day before the USA was due to play its first World Cup game?

EG: Because Solo has been receiving a lot of favorable press and sympathetic interviews that have allowed her to give her side of the story, painting herself as “a victim of domestic violence” who suffered a concussion in the scuffle with family members a year ago. She was on Good Morning America, and she was in a glowing ESPN magazine feature.

So the main trigger was Solo’s recent series of interviews, which Deadspin called “Hope Solo’s Redemption Tour.” Deadspin concluded that said tour is … well …

And Solo’s half-sister, Teresa Obert, felt the same way about Solo’s redemption tour and decided not to keep silent.

That’s one aspect of it. The other aspect, which we don’t fully know, is how long veteran reporter Mark Fainaru-Wada was chasing after the depositions and other records that were part of the broadcast.

Could ESPN have aired this piece a month ago? Probably not. Not enough new info.

Q. What’s the big deal? Each side says the other is lying, and we can’t tell which is which.

EG. Or maybe they’re both lying. Or maybe everyone’s guilty of some sort of abhorrent behavior. Look at the depositions in the ESPN story and see what you think.

Q. Weren’t the charges dismissed?

EG. Not exactly. Prosecutors are re-filing charges and will be back in court July 13.

Q. Back up a second — did Solo say “concussed”?

EG. Yep. Do you remember anyone reporting a Hope Solo concussion last summer? She missed a Seattle Reign game after the incident, but injury wasn’t the given reason.

Q. Wasn’t the media wrong for the whole way they handled Solo’s marriage to Jerramy Stevens?

EG. Ah yes — the accusation from the ESPN magazine story: “UNLIKE WHAT HAS been widely reported in the media, the Stevens and Solo love story did not begin two months before they wed but in fact sprang to life in college …”

Compare that with Solo’s memoir epilogue, released after the 2012 Olympics: “Adrian was beyond committed, a steady support system for me through these difficult times. Somewhere in the past year, there had been a significant shift in our relationship, and our full commitment to each other became clear and ironclad. We decided to start looking for a home, one where we could build our life together.”

Look, relationships are complicated, and we shouldn’t be so judgmental. But I think we can forgive anyone who read Hope’s memoir in September for being a little surprised when she turned up with Stevens a couple of months later. The fact that Stevens and Solo knew each other in college doesn’t erase pages from her memoir in which she talks about her future with another man a couple of months before marrying another.

Q. I still think ESPN just did this because they don’t have Women’s World Cup rights.

EG. ESPN also ran the sympathetic feature with the revisionist history on Solo’s relationships. (Disclaimer: I’ve written for ESPN. And Fox, which is showing the Cup this time. And, most recently, Fox News Latino.)

Q. Why does any of this matter?

EG. To a large degree, it doesn’t. The U.S. team has made peace with the fact that Solo is going to do her own thing. Solo is on the team not because she’s everyone’s best friend. She’s on the team because she has been the best big-game goalkeeper in the world over the past 10 years.

But when the media stop questioning stuff that clearly merits questioning, we’ve lost our way. Then, to give one not-so-hypothetical example, Solo can say a bunch of fans are racist without any serious repercussions or even anyone giving the other side.

Q. Why did the family skip some opportunities to tell itself when the case was first active? Not just to the media. To the court.

EG. That’s a good question, and I wish Outside the Lines had tackled it. (I didn’t see the full TV piece, so perhaps it was asked there.)

Q. How will this affect the U.S. team?

EG. It won’t.

Q. How will this affect Solo’s future endorsements?

EG. It’ll complicate them.

Q. What scares you about the whole situation on a personal level?

EG. The way so many people make excuses for her rather than accepting the fact that she’s a deeply flawed human being. The fight with her family, frankly, seems a little less disturbing than her attitude toward the police. (Unless the police were lying, but what’s their incentive to do that?)

She also does a lot of good, absolutely — if you’ve ever seen her with kids, you know that. No one’s saying you can’t be her fan.

But here’s a basic fact of life: Make a claim of being a victim, and you’d better be able to back it up. Especially when we see other indications to the contrary.

Root for her on Monday if you like. That’s up to you. But if you’re looking for victims to whom you send your sympathy, you might want to choose some with where the facts are clearer and their own roles in the situation are cleaner.

But all those are just educated guesses. Not “answers.” Please don’t accuse me of telling you how to think. Just tossing out a few things to think about.

 

0
soccer

Hope Solo is unique because …

Posted on by Beau Dure

… there simply isn’t anyone like her.

Obvious statement, isn’t it? It’s the very definition of the word “unique.” She’s an individual.

But in her case, when she’s in the news, we always have a confluence of issues that make it difficult to compare her to any other athlete. And they’re coming up again now that she has been suspended in the wake of her husband’s DUI arrest and the complex situation around it. Read the ESPN story with Julie Foudy’s insider take on what led to the suspension. Elsewhere, I’ve heard the suspension compared to a “persistent infringement” yellow card — an accumulation of questionable decisions.

But even if you agree with the suspension, which seems to be the majority view, you can find yourself in a fiery dispute.

The issues that make a perfect storm around Solo news include:

She’s an occasionally famous athlete: If you’re not a women’s soccer diehard, you may know who Hope Solo is, but you don’t follow her from week to week. She’s in the spotlight at the Olympics and the World Cup. Or sometimes in a magazine shoot. Or in a controversy.

Olympic athletes are the same way. We pay more attention to Tiger Woods getting a tooth knocked out than we do to the reason he was there, Lindsey Vonn setting the record for World Cup wins. If Tiger hadn’t shown up, a lot of people wouldn’t know what Vonn did, even though it’s one of the most impressive feats an Olympic athlete can achieve.

So in this sense, Solo is like some athletes but not like those in sports that are covered in “mainstream” media throughout their competitive seasons and in the offseason.

Her background is different from that of most teammates: That’s a major theme of her memoir. Women’s soccer players typically have comfortable childhoods. She didn’t. In this sense, she’s more like a typical NFL or NBA athlete, whose triumphs over adversity are commonly told.

So that’s two items we’ve considered. One makes her similar to a sporadically covered Olympic athlete. One makes her similar to NFL and NBA athletes. Already, we’re talking about an unusual person.

The women’s soccer community has a chip on its shoulder: Or several. And rightly so. A lot of things have gone wrong in women’s soccer over the years. Two leagues have collapsed, and not even for the same reasons. The last season of WPS was a quagmire of legal action and bizarre incidents that killed any momentum from the 2011 World Cup. Women’s soccer fans can be defensive, sometimes mistrusting perceived outsiders. I’m not judging here — it’s understandable. I feel that way myself at times. I point it out just because it adds to the emotion when a Solo story makes the news.

She has been controversial for a long time: Here, one of the closest analogues would be Allen Iverson, a talented basketball player remembered mostly for his “practice?” press conference and his legal and financial woes (ironically chronicled here by Kate Fagan, one of the participants in last night’s Twitter disagreements). Start with the 2007 incident in which she ripped her coach’s decision in a way that also insulted (intentionally or not) Briana Scurry, then add various Twitter rants (pity her old tweets all disappeared), then add the incident just before a wedding few people expected (to a man with a serious criminal record), then add her recent family fight. Charges in the latter were dropped, and we’ll never really know what happened.

She wrote a controversial book to which most people involved didn’t respond: Consider Tim Howard’s recent memoir and his claim that Brad Friedel tried to block him from going to Manchester United. Friedel responded. Howard listened to Friedel and has edited his book. In Solo’s case, most of the people who come across badly in her book (with the exception of Greg Ryan disputing one specific incident) have remained silent. They’ve decided it’s not worth the effort to get into a back-and-forth dispute with Solo and her legions of fans.

(By the way, the “From the Back Cover” text at Amazon is still inaccurate. It says Solo had four shutouts in the World Cup before she was benched. She gave up two goals to North Korea, then had three shutouts. I was told by the publisher this would be fixed for later editions. But it lives on at Amazon.)

I’ve been down this road before in a post I enjoyed writing mostly for the Saturday Night Live spoof — Hope Solo: Too unique for a double standard. (Yes, it covers the 2007 incident.)

The basic point: It’s not Solo’s gender that makes her unique — at least, that’s not the only or even the primary factor. It’s the totality of the situation. She’s unlike other female athletes, yes. But she’s also unlike other athletes, period.

Given that, I think analyzing and assessing Solo’s suspension and her media coverage require a variety of perspectives. It’s not fair to chase off veteran sports writers who have covered women’s soccer just because they aren’t tweeting about day-to-day NWSL events. (That’s a thinly caricatured reference to some of last night’s Twitter conversation.) They’re basing their analysis on a solid base of knowledge, and it’s a valuable perspective — just as several other perspectives are valuable.

“But weren’t you questioning the late-arriving media in September when they realized Solo was still playing despite a pending legal case?” Here’s the difference: The media in that case came in very late to an existing situation, implicitly insisting that the case was important now that they were paying attention. In case you’re wondering, a lot of people had similar takes, while others quietly unfollowed me. You simply can’t please everyone when it comes to a Hope Solo case, particularly because everyone’s emotions are so inflamed because of the confluence of issues above.

Once again, in the wake of her suspension, I’m not sure we can come up with a comparison to make to another athlete. What if Tim Howard had recently had a criminal case dropped, only to be out late at night at training camp with his spouse, who got arrested on suspicion of DUI? (And was allegedly hostile to the police and nearly arrested himself — the “allegedly” is important here because, frankly, we shouldn’t put our full faith in TMZ’s account of anything, including the Solo incident.) Would Howard get a 30-day suspension and a lot of media coverage?

I’m inclined to say yes. I base that on 20-plus years of covering sports, men’s and women’s. If you come from a different perspective and would guess otherwise, I can respect that. Just understand that my perspective is also valid.

“What about Charlie Davies?” some said last night. Davies was in a U.S. men’s training camp when he got in the car with a drunk driver who crashed, seriously injuring Davies and killing another passenger. Fans rallied to Davies’ support. They also questioned his decision to get in the car.

Davies made a tragic mistake. The soccer community loved the sinner and hoped he would recover. They hated the sin. And there wasn’t much point in any additional punishment — Davies’ injuries cost him a couple of years of his pro career and (barring a remarkable next step in his comeback) any future shot at the national team, for which he had been playing well before the accident.

In Solo’s case, it’s OK to feel the same way we felt about Davies. It takes a rather snarky person to want Solo to continue making headlines for getting in trouble.

And she seems to recognize that she can’t continue down this path. In her statement, she says she thinks it’s best to take a break.

This statement didn’t satisfy everyone — as if any statement could. Some people are quibbling with the need to “decompress.” But we don’t know everything that’s going on with her and her family. Some might say this statement is PR’d-up, but I’m willing to take her at her word when she says something so specific about taking time away. I don’t think it’s the least bit controversial to say she needs to address some issues before she returns to the national team.

My guess is that she’s successful. I’m basing that on years of following her career, including several conversations with her of all types — group, private, friendly, less friendly, sports-related, music-related, philosophical. And yet, after all those years, I can’t say anything about Solo would surprise me. I might not understand her any better than you do if you’ve only read about her.

After all, she’s unique.

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soccer

Hope Solo: The backlash against the bandwagon

Posted on by Beau Dure

As the belated outrage over Hope Solo’s status on the U.S. women’s national team continues to grow, we’re seeing a lot of voices reminding us that the issue is much more complicated than it’s being presented in a lot of quarters. It’s certainly more complicated than the “if Ray Rice is suspended, why isn’t Hope Solo?” nonsense from the “men’s rights” knuckle-draggers.

This post, which will be updated (feel free to send me links), is to highlight those voices in the hopes that they’ll be part of the national conversation.

Not all of these voices are in complete agreement about how to handle the Solo situation. Some call for her suspension but have misgivings about where the discourse is headed. Some agree with my take that U.S. Soccer erred in celebrating her shutout record but think there’s no point is suspending her now. (After her trial, anything goes.) But they’re all good at bringing out the nuances in a case that really isn’t that simple:

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic: 

It is now becoming fashionable to ignore human history and dump all manner of insupportable violence committed by athletes into the same bucket. The label on that bucket reads “Something Bad, Which We Should Punish.” It is true that what Ray Rice did was violent and wrong. It is also true that what Adrian Peterson did was violent and wrong. And it also true that what Hope Solo is alleged to have done is violent and wrong. But they are not the same specimen of violent and wrong.

Jen Doyle, The Sport Spectacle:

Fans of the USWNT will know well that Solo is facing assault charges. That story is not new. Washington Post editors might want to claim that this is “the domestic violence case that no one is talking about,” but that claim only works we ignore The Seattle Times, which, for example, has covered the story consistently, and responsibly, through their Seattle Sounders FC blog (Solo plays for Seattle Reign). The fact is that the national news media basically doesn’t give a shit about women’s sports stories unless they can be made into stories about men. Unless Solo’s case, in other words, can appear as a footnote to the Ray Rice story and (worse) absorbed into some broad popular sense that women, in general, are somehow getting away with something.

Jeff Kassouf, Equalizer Soccer: 

On Friday, Solo was suddenly “the domestic violence case no one is talking about.” People are “turning a blind eye” on the Solo case!

Except for the entirety of mainstream and niche media alike when it happened in June (including those …very … outlets writing those Friday pieces). The news on Solo’s alleged domestic violence was hardly ignored then. Every major media outlet in the country reported on it, giving it the red breaking news bar and top-of-the-headline-stack treatment similar to these NFL stories.

The cases “no one is talking about” are the 12 million people affected each year by intimate partner violence, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Amanda Hess, Slate:

All of the players who have been benched in the past couple of weeks are taking the heat for their league’s long-standing ignorance of domestic violence. It’s not clear that this approach—which penalizes highly visible players while letting the league off the hook—is ideal. What we do know for certain is that it’s not applicable to U.S. women’s soccer, which has no such systematic, decades-long history of ignoring the fact that certain players abuse their partners.

Kate Fagan, espnW:

What’s concerning about the dialogue around Hope Solo is this: It’s diverting us from the core issue. It feels like a distraction tactic to take the pressure off male athletes, off men in general, off the social epidemic of domestic violence.

Christine Brennan, USA TODAY:

(USOC CEO) Blackmun is not calling on U.S. Soccer to remove Solo from the women’s national team roster now. While Blackmun did not say why, it’s believed that the USOC is concerned about Solo’s right to a hearing and due process under the U.S. Amateur Sports Act while she awaits a November trial.

Stephanie Yang, The Soccer Desk:

As an additional complication, female athletes are certainly held to a much higher standard of moral behavior than male athletes. The least deviation from “appropriate” behavior for women is as or more remarkable than extreme instances of deviation by men. Look at the level of violence required to generate large-scale commentary and/or condemnation in the Ray Rice case. Look at how Floyd Mayweather is still allowed to compete and is, in fact, lauded by many. Ben Roethlisberger has been accused of sexual assault multiple times. Look at the sheer number of professional male athletes who are arrested, not just for domestic violence, and allowed to return to their teams after an insignificant period of “contrition.” Here is an article discussing arrest rates among NFL players. So I think there is false equivalence in media coverage of Hope’s situation as comparable to these other instances of DV.

Laura Taylor, Happy Go Snarky:

Editor: But we’ve got a problem. There are people out there writing rebuttal articles and blogs that are being very well-received. They’re making us look like amateurs who don’t know anything about women’s soccer and are only covering this because the Ray Rice story is huge and we want to make some tenuous connection to a famous, pretty girl who also allegedly committed the same crime. Terrence, I’d like you to write a new article about her.

Terrence: About women’s soccer, sir? But I’m the foreign affairs writer and we just bombed Syria and Iraq. Shouldn’t I focus on that?

(Feel free to add more links in the comments — again, I’ll update this post.)

 

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