Solo, Hope Solo [best non fiction books of all time .txt] 📗

while he tried out with a Swedish team. Wounded by Adrian, I had a moment of weakness; my friend and I had a drunken fling. I was instantly remorseful. Sobbing on the phone, I confessed to Adrian.

“Thanks for telling me,” he said. He sounded mature, but the distance between us grew.

That autumn the U.S. team went on a nine-game victory tour, celebrating the gold medal and bidding farewell to the ’99ers. I wasn’t invited to participate because I had been an alternate—a decision made by the veterans. Instead, I returned to Seattle after my Swedish season ended. Once there, I quickly figured out that I couldn’t live with Adrian anymore. He would go out all the time and not tell me where he had been. He was still trying to punish me for what I’d done in Sweden.

One day, I’d had enough. I loaded up my car with all my belongings and moved out, crashing with my former teammate, Malia. Then I shared an apartment with Cheryl’s brother Ben. I was depressed. My heart was broken. I didn’t have anywhere to live. My beloved Seattle felt like a trap. I needed to leave.

Fortunately, my agent called with another contract offer: this time in Lyon, playing for Olympique Lyonnais, an established team offering great money and good benefits. In late December, I boarded a plane for France.

Several weeks later, as I was adjusting to life in Lyon, I got word from across the Atlantic of a huge national team shakeup. April had resigned as head coach.

One morning, my phone rang. “Hi, Hope,” said the voice on the other end. “This is Greg Ryan.”

CHAPTER TEN

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

If I had made a list of all the people I thought might coach the national team, Greg Ryan would probably have been dead last. Greg had been April’s unremarkable assistant coach, a terrier-faced man with a perpetually surprised expression. He mostly faded into the background, rarely talking and never taking charge at practice. If he had any leadership skills or technical savvy, I never saw it. I figured he got the job simply because he was a friend of April’s.

But now, in February 2005, he was on the other end of the phone, telling me he was the interim national-team coach. And that I was on his roster for the upcoming Algarve Cup in Portugal. I felt bad for April. She had always been my supporter—all the way back to when I was first in the Olympic Development Program as a kid in Richland. She gave me my first break on the national team and was always straightforward and honest about what I needed to do to improve. Her departure was officially portrayed as a resignation, but there were reports that she had been forced out by the veteran players. I’d heard their grumblings—I believed they had been lobbying to get rid of her for years, unhappy with her soccer tactics, her communication skills, and her leadership style. I think the veterans felt they knew what was best for the team, and when they failed to win the 2000 Olympics and the 2003 World Cup, the players probably tried to use that as leverage against April. There were published reports that Brandi Chastain asked U.S. Soccer president Robert Contiguglia to fire April eight months before the Athens Olympics, but he refused.

Even winning the gold medal in Athens didn’t save April’s job. After Brazil had thoroughly outplayed us, it was reported that the veterans—even those who were retiring—sent a letter to April expressing their displeasure and asking her to resign. It seemed to me that now U.S. Soccer was no longer supportive of her, since the World Cup and Olympic cycle was over and a new four-year cycle was about to start. Rather than serve out the final ten months of her contract, April quit. The reported power struggle seemed to be indicative of the control the veteran players felt they had over the team. But they didn’t control who would replace her. And now Greg Ryan was the head coach.

I wasn’t the only person in Lyon getting a phone call from Greg. That winter, Lyon was a popular destination for Americans—Danielle Slaton, Aly Wagner, Lorrie Fair, and Christie Welsh had all signed to play with Olympique Lyonnais, an up-and-coming team run by the strong French men’s club of the same name. We all lived together in residential housing and took weekend trips to Paris and the Alps to go skiing. I didn’t like being with so many Americans. It made France seem less special than Sweden had been. Instead of meeting new people and rising to new challenges, I felt I was in an extension of U.S. training camp, with all the same issues, jealousies, and gossip reaching across the Atlantic to the base of the French Alps. I was also distraught over my breakup with Adrian.

In early March, Aly, Lorrie, Christie, and I flew to Lisbon for the Algarve Cup, joining a national team with a decidedly different look. Mia, Julie, and Joy had retired. Brandi wasn’t on the roster. Bri was taking time off. Christie (Pearce) Rampone—now married, though she was always Pearcie to us—was pregnant. Only Kristine Lilly and Kate Markgraf remained from the ’99ers, though Abby Wambach was so tight with them you would have thought she had stripped off her own jersey along with them in the Rose Bowl in July 1999.

Greg worked to win us over. April never seemed to have much fun, never had a drink, and was always super-serious. Greg was trying to be the exact opposite. He wore sandals and played his guitar for us. He told jokes. He had drinks in the hotel bar. He seemed to be trying hard to cultivate an image as a fun-loving, laid-back dude who would be an awesome guy to have around. During one of our first team dinners in Portugal, Greg cruised into the room with his guitar. “Hey, who’s got a request?”