On Yesterday's women's world cup match....

Little backgroud, for those of you who turn off sportscenter after the first 8 minutes.

Yesterday the U.S. Women's national team was blow out by Brazil 4-0 in the world cup Semifinals. Before the match it was announced that Regular goalkeeper Hope Solo was going to be benched in favor of 1999 world cup hero Brianna Scurry. Scurry gave up a few bad goals after which Solo said those are saves she would've made. Solo also was very critical of Coach Ryan's decision.

Normally such critizisms of a player and a coach seem quite unseemly (see Terrel Owens). However, the manager's decision was so poor in this I'm actually willing to defend Solo on this, however I still think it was wrong for Solo to throw Bri under the bus like that, I think her critisizims of Ryan are spot on. What follows in an excerpt from a post I made on the ESPN soccernet boards.

"Cleary, Ryan was the selfish one in all of this. The only reason to bench a keeper with 300 straight shutout minutes is because Ryan wanted to make the semifinal about him. Ryan wanted to make the shocking move that would prove brilliant when the U.S. beat Brazil. He wanted the glory, and this in part is fueled by his huberis that the U.S. can win regardless of who's back there. This blew up in his face, and Julie Foudy on the ESPN broadcast was absoulty right that if this plan was in the back of his mind, why didn't Scurry get a start in one of the first round matches?

A decision this horrible is a result of an ego-manical manager, that had 5 days to overthink this, and at the spur of the moment decided this could be his shot at glory, to do the unthinkable and hope it works out.

And what's so stupid about this is the underlying belief that U.S. were certain to beat Brazil no matter what. The rest of the world of women's soccer has caught up since 1999, and the U.S. were fortunate to outlast England in the quarters (in part due to fine Keeping by Solo, especially in the 1st half).

But when you look at it from this perspective, I don't really have a probelm with Solo calling Ryan out, especially if his motives were questionable. I agree with the OP that this is about the team, but Ryan put himself in front of the team. To make his mark, to get the good press, and it blew up collassaly."

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