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Hope Solo claims that Megan Rapinoe would “nearly bully” members of the U.S. Ladies’s Nationwide Staff into kneeling to affix in her protests of racial injustice.
Solo, talking on GOAL’s podcast “All of US: The U.S. Ladies’s Soccer Present,” mentioned that Rapinoe tried to get different gamers on the group to kneel “as a result of she actually desires to face up for one thing in her explicit manner.” Solo was suspended from the USWNT in August 2016 and Rapinoe didn’t start kneeling till September 2016 in solidarity with 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who first began taking a knee to protest racial injustice and police brutality in August 2016 after Solo’s suspension. Solo didn’t return to the group.
“It’s our proper as People to do it no matter manner we’re comfy with and I believe that’s actually onerous being on the primary stage proper now with so many political points for athletes,” Solo mentioned on the podcast. “There’s loads of stress and finally on the finish of the day our primary focus ought to and has at all times been to win first.”
DeCOURCY: Timeline of Solo’s ‘nearly bullying’ declare does not line up
Rapinoe and several other members of the USWNT have turn into outspoken on a number of subjects over the previous a number of years, starting from equal pay in sports activities to racial inequality and LGBTQ+ rights. The protests have made the group a supply of controversy at instances. Again in 2016, Rapinoe was the primary — and on the time, solely — participant on the group to kneel, and shortly thereafter, U.S. soccer dominated that gamers needed to stand for the anthem. Rapinoe’s teammate, Crystal Dunn, mentioned that she was afraid of shedding her spot on the roster if she kneeled and mentioned that she was “stuffed with a lot pleasure” for Rapinoe’s choice to protest.
The coverage requiring gamers to face was initially repealed in June 2020 and was formally voted out in February 2021, CNN reported. The New York Submit reported that there have been no cases during which gamers have been negatively affected by deciding to not kneel through the nationwide anthem, and added that the group has been standing for the anthem since February.
Solo has not been a member of the USWNT since 2016. After the group’s quarterfinals loss to Sweden within the 2016 Rio Olympics, Solo referred to as the Swedish Nationwide Staff “a bunch of cowards” due to a defensive type to carry off the USA till penalty kicks. She had additionally been beforehand charged with assaulting two relations in 2014, although the costs have been ultimately dismissed. She was additionally suspended by the USWNT in 2015 after she borrowed a group van and was arrested on a cost of driving underneath the affect.
That is the newest incident in whicgh Solo has criticized Rapinoe. Earlier in 2021, Solo advised beIN Sports activities that Rapinoe and different leaders of the USWNT signed a collective bargaining settlement that was a step again from the progress the group had been making in receiving pay equal to the boys’s group.
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