Carli Lloyd hopes Solo will return to U.S. team
Hope Solo will always be one of Carli Lloyd’s closest friends. She hopes they’ll be teammates once again, too.
The star goalkeeper was suspended for six months and had her national team contract terminated after calling Sweden “a bunch of cowards” at the Rio Olympics. Sweden eliminated the U.S. women in the quarterfinals on penalty kicks after employing a conservative, defensive-minded strategy during regulation and overtime.
In announcing Solo’s suspension, U.S. Soccer indicated that her previous behavior had played a factor. She was suspended for a month in January 2015 after her husband, Jerramy Stevens, was arrested for DUI while driving a team van.
She also is facing domestic violence charges over an incident with her sister and nephew in June 2014.
“It’s really sad and heartbreaking about Hope,” Lloyd told Paste BN Sports during an interview Monday about the release of her new book, When Nobody Was Watching: My Hard-Fought Journey to the Top of the Soccer World.
“This was clearly not just about the comment in Rio,” Lloyd added. “This is about the sum of a lot of decisions made in her career. Unfortunately, the comment was just the icing on the cake.”
Though Solo is eligible to return in February, that seems unlikely. She is 35, and the next major tournament is not until the Women’s World Cup in 2019.
But Lloyd, one of the U.S. captains, remains hopeful.
“I hope that when the suspension is done, everybody takes a deep breath, U.S. Soccer and her,” she said. “I do hope they can figure something out.”