The US Women’s National Team doesn’t hear Hope Solo’s criticism, and even if they did, what would it matter?
“I haven’t been on social media since we left New York,” goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher told reporters in France, “so I’m not really sure what’s going on.”
Naeher, unwittingly, has been a part of the controversy surrounding Solo by virtue of being her replacement. Solo was dismissed from the national team in 2016 after calling Sweden “cowards” following an Olympic loss and was back at it when talking to the BBC in the run-up to the World Cup. Solo slammed women’s team coach Jill Ellis, who led the USWNT to the 2015 World Cup.
“Jill is not the leader I want her to be,” Solo said. “She relies heavily on her assistant coaches. She cracks under the pressure quite a bit. But often that doesn’t matter because the quality of players on the US team is superb. It doesn’t matter who is coaching us because we will find a way to win. The United States knows how to find a way to win in spite of who the coach is.”
With the USWNT starting its World Cup against Thailand on Tuesday, Solo’s comments set off a firestorm. It doesn’t help that Naeher was already facing questions about whether she could adequately replace Solo, including from former goalkeeper Briana Scurry.
“Obviously (Solo) had an incredible legacy,” Naeher said. “She was a great player for this team and she was a great goalkeeper. She represented this team for a very long time at a high level and she was one of the best goalkeepers in the world for a long time. I have a lot of respect for the career she had.”
For Ellis, Naeher and everyone else, the best way to answer Solo’s charges is, of course, to win.
“The best way to come together as a group is to kind of create that bubble, eliminate all the outside noise,” Naeher said. “We have all those expectations for ourselves. We don’t need any outside things. We have high standards. We want to win.”