Hope Solo has been locked out of international soccer for over five months, since she was suspended by US Soccer in August for calling the Swedish national team “cowards” at the Rio Olympics, yet her imprint on the US women’s national team remained like a bad dream.
Until now.
On Thursday, Solo’s former teammate and close friend, two-time FIFA women’s player of the year Carli Lloyd, was conspicuously left off the committee responsible for negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement with the US Soccer Federation — a further sign an American soccer comeback for Solo would be difficult.
Lloyd has been Solo’s strongest advocate through each of the goalkeeper’s many controversies, starting with her attack on former head coach Greg Ryan for starting Briana Scurry over her in the semifinals of the 2007 Olympics — “From that point on, we’ve remained close friends,” Lloyd told The Post in October — and ending with her fiery words in Rio.
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Is this US women's soccer's final Hope Solo snub? 0:0 Just when Hope Solo thought she couldn’t be more of… “I think the media will extract what they want to extract and that word was just extracted from it,” Lloyd said in the same interview, referring to Solo’s postgame comments. “There was an entire quote surrounding that that kind of went unnoticed. But Hope’s competitive, and she wouldn’t be who she was without that competitive nature and that drive and focus.”
The veteran goalkeeper lost one ally in December when player representatives announced they had parted ways with attorney Rich Nichols, whom Solo reportedly pushed the team to hire in 2014 with the intention of making real strides in the fight for equal pay. Nichols had passionately defended Solo in the wake of her suspension, calling the punishment a “violation” of her “First Amendment Rights.”
The US Women’s National Soccer Team Players Association announced Thursday night the hiring of law firm Bredhoff & Kaiser and confirmed that Becky Sauerbrunn, Meghan Klingenberg and Christen Press were elected player representatives at the team’s January training camp. Sauerbrunn and Press will join teammates Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Kelley O’Hara, and Sam Mewis on the collective bargaining committee, which the team made a point of keeping player-driven.
With Solo, Nichols and Lloyd out, each side to the negotiations has said the talks are headed in a positive direction.
“We have committed ourselves to changing the tone of negotiations, and really working with the federation to come to a contract where both sides are going to leave feeling they got a fair and just deal,” said Sauerbrunn, who has been with the senior national team as a defender since 2008 and served as Lloyd’s co-captain in Rio.
“The tone is just completely different, and everyone wants to get a deal done,” US Soccer president Sunil Gulati said at a news conference on Thursday morning announcing a partnership between the National Women’s Soccer League and A&E Networks. “The players want to play. We want to have a fair CBA, so I have no doubt we’ll get a deal done.”
Both Sauerbrunn and Gulati expressed hope an agreement could be reached ahead of NWSL openers in April. The sides met during January’s training camp and have several meetings scheduled in the coming weeks.
Rapinoe, a national team mainstay since 2006 and not one to withhold her opinion (such as her controversial decision to kneel for the national anthem in September), expressed similar optimism in an argument that has been several years in the making.
“I think the tone is really positive at this point,” Rapinoe told the Associated Press. “I think that we’re excited to collaborate with U.S. Soccer and hopefully get the best deal, not only for us but for them as well in this partnership going forward. I think we’re still very committed to the mission and the goals that we’ve had from the beginning for this CBA, and that’s to get a deal that fairly reflects the work we do on and off the field and our value on the market.”
With AP
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