"My family doesn't do happy endings. We do sad endings or frustrating endings or no endings at all. We are hardwired to expect the next interruption or disappearance or broken promise."Hope Solo is the face of the modern female athlete. She is fearless, outspoken, and the best in the world at what she does: protecting the goal of the U.S. women's soccer team. Her outsized talent has led her to the pinnacle of her sport—the Olympics and the World Cup—and made her into an international celebrity who is just as likely to appear on ABC's Dancing with the Stars as she is on the covers of Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, and Vogue. But her journey—which began in Richland, Washington, where she was raised by her strong-willed mother on the scorched earth of defunct nuclear testing sites—is similarly haunted by the fallout of her family history. Her father, a philanderer and con man, was convicted of embezzlement when Solo was an infant. She lost touch with him as he drifted out of prison and into homelessness. By the time they reunited, years later, in the parking lot of a grocery store, she was an All-American goalkeeper at the University of Washington and already a budding prospect for the U.S. national team. He was living in the woods.Despite harboring serious doubts even about the provenance of her father's last name (and her own), Solo embraces him as fiercely as she pursues her dreams of being a world-class soccer player. When those dreams are threatened by her standing within the national team, as when she was famously benched in the semifinals of the 2007 World Cup after four shutouts and spoke her piece publicly, we see a woman of uncompromising independence and hard-won perseverance navigate the petty backlash against her. For the first time, she tells her version of that controversial episode, and offers with it a full understanding of her hard-scrabble life.Moving, sometimes shocking, Solo is a portrait of an athlete finding redemption. This is the Hope Solo whom few have ever glimpsed.
In 2015, FIFA--the multibillion dollar governing body of the world's most-loved sport--was brought down by allegations of industrial-scale bribes, kickbacks, money laundering, racketeering, and tax evasion. Beginning with early morning raids in ...
Deeply researched and drawing on 100 exclusive interviews including the key decision-makers at every major English team—from aristocrats like Manchester United and Arsenal, to the arrivistes at Chelsea and Manchester City—The Club is the...
King Power Stadium, countdown to kick off. Out on the pitch a lone brass player sounds the haunting Post Horn Gallop, for 80 years the home players' entrance tune. Spines tingle. Air is gulped into lungs. Game time, time to begin the chase. On the ...
From Cruyff's "Total Football" to the epic rivalry between Guardiola and Mourinho, a gripping chronicle of the rise and fall of Barcelona's dominance in world soccer.Barcelona's style of play--pressing and possessing--is the single biggest influenc...
"I believe that we will win."In the summer of 2014, Tim Howard became an overnight sensation after more than ten years as one of America's leading professional soccer players. His record-breaking 15 saves for the United States national ...
The definitive, shocking account of the FIFA scandal—the biggest international corruption case of recent years, spearheaded by US investigators, involving dozens of countries, and implicating nearly every aspect of the world’s most popul...
Narrator: Jonathan Todd Ross Published: 06/12/2018
The first openly gay professional athlete in North America tells the story of his landmark decision to come out of the closet and how he changed the playing field of professional sports forever.“Rogers made history.” —Sports Illust...
Game of Shadows meets Among the Thugs in this revelatory true-to-life crime thriller and expose involving greed, corruption, an Asian crime syndicate, and the fixing of international soccer matches at the highest levels of the game, including the U...
In Masters of Modern Soccer, Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl asks: How do some of the game's smartest figures master the craft of soccer? By profiling players in every key position (American phenomenon Christian Pulisic, Mexican superstar Javie...
