After the United States women’s national soccer team lost in penalty kicks in the Olympic games, Hope Solo called the Swedish team “a bunch of cowards.” In response to this outburst by Solo, the national team federation banned Solo from playing for six months and also terminated her contract, putting her play within the Women’s National Soccer League under the Seattle Reign at risk.
Solo is the most dominant goalkeeper in United States history. She was the first goalkeeper, man or woman, to record 100 clean sheets in national team play. Solo has also been a controversial figure. She is still in the middle of a domestic violence case, in which she has been accused of beating up a teenager during a house party. Richland in Washington, her hometown, initially refused to recognize her accomplishments for winning a gold metal because of the dispute. Early last year, she was with her husband when he was arrested for a DUI while driving a national team van. For that incident, she was banned for thirty days.
According to the federation, the six-month ban is a culmination of the previous events and not based on the comments alone. For a long time, Solo seemed to avoid punishment just because of how skilled she was as a player. However, the women’s national teams have no tournaments or major matches coming up. Previous incidents happened during preparation for the World Cup and the Olympics, and the federation could not afford to lose the best female goalkeeper in the world for these tournaments. The length of the ban is a sour move, when the federation ignored past behavior of a player in order to win matches.
Some may even call it “cowardly.”

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Hope Solo in 2015 playing for the US Women's National Team