Hope F'ing Solo

I gotta say one of the weirdest sports stories I have ever heard occurred during the semifinals of the Women's World Cup the other day. The US team was cruising through the tournament, and their keeper, Hope Solo (the hottie shown above), had accumulated almost 300 minutes without allowing a goal.

So the US team coach did the obvious. He started her backup, Briana Scurry, in the semifinal game against Brazil and the US team went down 4-0.

Now, Scurry has had unqualified success against the Brazil team in the past. With emphasis on in the past. But there is no way he should have made that decision, not with the way that Solo (what a cool fucking name, by the way) had been playing. Oh, she was also on a mission because she had just recently lost her dad...so she had some impetus to play as well as she had been.

It got really weird after the game though, when Solo talked to the media and called out the US coach on his awful decision. "It was the wrong decision, and anyone who knows anything about the game knows that," Solo said. "There's no doubt in my mind that I would have made those saves."

She then took the time to take out Scurry with some comments as well. "The fact of the matter is that it is not 2004 anymore," Solo said. "It's 2007 and you have to live in the present and you can't live in the past. It does not matter what someone did in an Olympic gold medal game three years ago. Now is what matters and that's what I think."

I don't think I've ever heard an athlete go ballistic like this on such an important and international stage before. Whether she was right in what she said or if she was wrong to do so, it was crazy.

I guess crazy comes in threes. This week we had Milton Bradley go nuts on an umpire (and tear his ACL at the same time), the coach of Oklahoma State go nuts on the media and now this.

God(dess), I love sports!