Where Is Hope Solo Now? The Soccer Champ Has Faced Her Share of Controversies

It's always sad when an athlete's incredible accomplishments can become overshadowed by troubles in their personal life. This has been the case more than once for soccer star Hope Solo, who is considered one of the best goalkeepers in the sport.

Unfortunately, Hope has faced her fair share of issues off the field, and has made headlines for troubling reasons throughout the years.

So what happened to Hope, and where is she now? Here's what to know.

First, let's take a look back at Hope's beginnings. Hope was born on July 30, 1981, in Richland, Wash. Her criminally inclined father — who had been to prison for embezzlement and conceived Hope during a conjugal visit while he was in jail — taught her to play soccer when she was little. After her parents divorced when she was 6, Hope's dad took her and her siblings out one day to catch a baseball game. But instead of taking them to a game, he drove them hours away to Seattle, where they stayed for days in a hotel before police caught up with them and arrested him for allegedly kidnapping his kids.

Her father was imprisoned again, and Hope lost contact with him. But they reconnected when Hope was in college, and they stayed close until he died in 2007. It was also during her college years — while playing soccer for the Huskies at the University of Washington — where she decided to change from forward to goalkeeper. She later reflected in her memoir that the "personality traits that had been shaped by my childhood — resilience and toughness — were assets" when it came to the position of goalkeeper.

After a successful college soccer career, Hope joined the Philadelphia Charge before playing in Europe for a bit. In 2008, she was recruited by the WSA for the Saint Louis Athletica, which led to her being named "U.S. Soccer Female Athlete of the Year." When the Athletica folded, she joined the Atlanta Beat, followed by the magicJack and then the Seattle Sounders Women, before the NWSL recruited her for the Seattle Reign FC.

Along the way, Hope played at the World Cup in 2007, 2011, and 2015, and was part of Team USA at the Olympics in 2008, 2012, and 2016. But after Hope called the Swedish team "cowards" during the 2016 Rio games, U.S. Soccer suspended her and ended her contract. She also took indefinite leave from the NWSL.

However, this wasn't Hope's first scandal.

In 2014, Hope was arrested on charges of domestic violence (which were later dropped) against her half-sister and her 17-year-old nephew. The following year, her husband — former NFL star Jerramy Stevens — was charged with driving drunk behind the wheel of a U.S. soccer team van while Hope was in the passenger seat. This led to a 30-day suspension for Hope. And in 2022, Hope was arrested for a DWI after she was found passed out behind the wheel of her car in a Walmart parking lot with her 2-year-old twins in the back seat.

Hope, who went to rehab afterward, later said that she had turned to alcohol after leaving behind her friends and family when she and her husband had moved from Washington to North Carolina to raise their kids. This isolation had been made all the worse by the pandemic. And on top of everything, Hope was struggling with postpartum depression.

"I didn't think I needed help,” Hope said on her podcast, months after the arrest. “And I certainly wasn't going to ask for it. At the time, I didn't know that I was only doing a disservice to my family. I thought that I could white-knuckle it. But the reality is that nobody gets through life without asking for help. My sense of strength and pride became my two worst enemies. And I found myself living the worst night of my life. I let alcohol get the better of me in this moment on this god-awful day, and I will suffer the consequences for some time."

Though it looks like Hope hasn't had any new episodes of her podcast (which she launched in early 2022) since August 2023, she seems to be keeping busy and doing well, based on her Instagram. She has been advocating for gender equality as well as supporting the @homelessworldcup. And she wrote the foreword for Rich Nichols’s May 2024 book All Things Being Equal —The Genesis, Costs and Aftermath of the USWNT’s Battle for Equal Pay.