Was US National Player Hope Solo right in going on camera criticizing the coach and his selection for the recent World Cup semi final?????
TONY SHARD’S VIEWPOINT: When you play all your life and have a chance to make a World Cup Final, and after apparently gaining the confidence of the coach for 44 of the previous 51 games, you would think she has grounds for complaints. Then the coach, based on a game that happened 3 years ago, decides to forget the previous 3 years and play somebody else in goal. Finally to top it all off, the player that replaces you gives up two goals that you would probably of stopped (although this doesn’t mean that the US would have won the game). Yes, Hope certainly has grounds to have MAJOR issues with the coach’s selection policy. There is probably not a coach in the world, given the situation, that would have taken that gamble. On the opposite side though, every coach will tell you, issues should be dealt with in-house and that dirty laundry should not be washed in public.
Should she have gone public with her opinion?
Only when your hopes to play in a world cup finally have been cruelly and inexplicably taken away from you could you really answer that question.
One thing for sure, if Greg Ryan would of gone public and apologized for putting Hope Solo and Brianna Scurry in this situation, (and having ESPN report on negative issues instead of positive issues), then he would gain a lot more respect than trying to defend his gamble, which to every rational person out there, obviously did not work.
WHAT IS YOUR VIEWPOINT?????? WAS HOPE SOLO RIGHT IN TELLING THE WORLD HER OPINION OR WAS SHE WAY OUT OF LINE?????
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Hope Solo had every right to voice her opinion. She gained the respect of her team mates and the world. The coach didn’t only let her down, he let all of us girls trying to capture that goal down. She deserved the start and he took that opportunity away from her. He owes her an apology and Brianna for putting her in that situation!!!!!!
Hope Solo should not have even been available to the press at that time to make a comment. The PR firm hired to promote the team was pathetic! The commercials and print advertising the National team was very poor. The “greatest team you’ve never heard of”, well, if you follow women’s soccer everyone knows them, great- not the way they played up until the third place game. The coach is to blame, Solo just got caught in the middle of his mistakes. Lets get some younger players in there and start looking forward to a strong future.
There are obviously two sides to this unfortunate issue. The worst part is that if the team had won the game, the negative press and Hope Solo’s opinion would have been treated very differently. I lost a great deal of respect for Hope Solo that day. She never should have spoken to “the press” after the game was over. She should have taken the issue to the coaching staff. She should have supported her team mates, including Brianna, during the game instead of pouting on the bench like a spoiled child. Bragging that she would have made the saves that Brianna did not is totally inappropriate as a public statement. Brianna Scurry is a member of that team and deserves to be treated with respect. Professional athletes with any experience in speaking to the press just do not put their teammates down like that and are criticized just as brutally by their peers for doing it. On the other side of the issue, I have been a coach myself for 35 years and part of my job as a leader of the program is to take responsibility for my decisions. Greg Ryan should have owned up to his mistake and taken charge of the press. He should have made sure that Brianna was protected and Hope’s reaction to his decision was dealt with “in house”.
The whole unfortunate situation put US Women’s Soccer “out there” for the program’s critics to put down even more. What everyone needs to keep in mind is that our US Women’s Soccer Team lost in the Semi Finals of a Tournament in which the best teams in the world were entered. Let’s give the rest of the world’s soccer teams and coaches some credit for being excellent and not be so arrogant as to think that the US would have won the game if the coach had made a different decision about the starting line-up.