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U.S. women's national team goalkeeper Hope Solo left quite the impression on this summer's Olympics, between her controversial tweets about former U.S. great and television analyst Brandi Chastain and her two massive saves against Japan in the Olympic final that helped the U.S. women capture gold for a third straight time.
With her book, "SOLO: A Memoir of Hope," hitting the shelves, new information involving Solo's most infamous moments have come to light, including one in which she claims she was physically shoved by a former coach.
Solo wrote that former U.S. women's national team coach Greg Ryan shoved her during a 2007 meeting after her outburst at his decision to bench her in favor of Brianna Scurry against Brazil in that summer's World Cup. Ryan vehemently denied the accusations.
"This allegation is completely false," Ryan, the current women's coach at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. “I did not shove or push Hope as I've been accused in her book. I would have been terminated immediately by U.S. Soccer had this allegation been true. I have openly discussed the contents of the meeting and this is the first time that this accusation has been brought to light.”
In the epilogue to her book, Solo goes into detail about the Olympics, specifically addressing the pointed tweets at Chastain, whom she criticized for her inadequate commentary during this summer's competition. Solo was chastised for creating an unnecessary distraction, but as she puts it, what she said was what her teammates were thinking, and it created more of a cohesion among the U.S. women than anything else.
In excerpts obtained by ESPNW, Solo wrote: "I knew that would get a reaction, but I felt that someone needed to stand up to Brandi. She had a microphone and an international platform. Why couldn't I voice my opinion? That's the beauty of social media. When the tweets came across everyone's Twitter feed, the bus erupted with cheers.
"'Hell yeah, Hope,'" my teammates cried. Christie Pearce Rampone and Abby Wambach and others offered up high fives. "'Somebody finally said it,'" they said. It was a bonding moment for our team.
"When Pia met with reporters later, on Sunday, after meeting with me and the captains, she was asked if I was going to be disciplined or if I had been reprimanded. That made me laugh. Our meeting was about what we were doing in training. Pia told me that she, in fact, did press mute when she watched the games of ours that Brandi worked from the booth. My teammates shared the opinions that I had voiced on Twitter. We were tighter than ever."
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What do you think of these developments? What do you make of Solo's latest comments about the Chastain fiasco?
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