Also on the ballot are Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder Landon Donovan, Fulham FC forward Clint Dempsey and AC Milan defender Oguchi Onyewu.

Two players from the WPS Champion Sky Blue, Forward Heather O’Reilly and defender Christie Rampone were named finalists for the U.S. Soccer women’s athlete of the year. Also on the ballot were Shannon Boxx of the Los Angeles Sol, Abby Wambackh of the Washington Freedom and Hope Solo of Saint Louis Athletica.

U.S. Soccer also announced the finalists for the young female, and young male – athlete of the year.

Fans will have the opportunity to make their selections for each of the four athlete of the year categories once a day until Dec. 13.

The male and Female athletes of the year awards are the oldest awards of their kind, dating back to 1984 for the men and 1985 for the women, while the young male and young female awards were added in 1998.

The finalists for each award were nominated on the basis of:

* Competing and excelling at the highest level (at the national team and professional level) during the calendar year

* Exhibiting decorum on and off the field that reflects well on U.S. Soccer

* Contributing toward the growth, development, credibility and popularization of soccer in the USA. A player can only win a Youth Athlete award once in his or her career (past winners).

Online votes for the annual award will be tallied and equivalent to 50 percent of the total votes. As in years past, the other 50 percent will be represented by votes compiled from members of the national media and U.S. Soccer representatives (from national team coaches to the National Board of Directors).

Fans also can vote daily for the eighth annual edition of the Best of U.S. Soccer awards until Dec. 13. The 2009 Best of U.S. Soccer Awards span 12 categories in an eclectic ballot. The winners of the 2009 Best of U.S. Soccer awards are chose entirely by online fan votes submitted during the next few weeks.

Male Athlete candidates

Michael Bradley, Midfielder, Borussia Mönchengladbach
Clint Dempsey, Forward, Fulham FC
Landon Donovan, Midfielder, Los Angeles Galaxy
Tim Howard, Goalkeeeper, Everton
Oguchi Onyewu, Defender, A.C. Milan

Female Athlete candidates

Shannon Boxx, Midfielder, Los Angeles Sol
Heather O’Reilly, Midfielder, Sky Blue FC
Christie Rampone Defender, Sky Blue FC
Hope Solo, Goalkeeper, Saint Louis Athletica
Abby Wambach, Forward, Washington Freedom

Young Male Athlete candidates

Marlon Duran, Midfielder, U17 MNT/Latino American
Luis Gil, Midfielder, U17 MNT/Pateadores
Jared Jeffrey, Midfielder, U20 MNT/Brugge (Belgium)
Brian Perk, Goalkeeeper, U20 MNT/UCLA
Tyler Polak, Defender, U17 MNT/Capital Soccer Academy

Young Female Athlete candidates

Tobin Heath, Midfielder, North Carolina
Christine Nairn, Midfielder, Penn State
Sydney Leroux, Forward, UCLA
Kelley O’Hara, Forward, Stanford
Katie Schoepfer, Forward, Penn State

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The USA is ranked No. 1. Germany is No. 2.

The USA won the 2008 Olympics. Germany has won the last two World Cups and the 2009 European championship.

The USA has a well-established college match and a new professional league, WPS. Germany is the only major European country to keep its players home in its domestic league, the Bundesliga, which has three of the final 16 teams in Europe’s new Champions League.

Thursday’s match (1 p.m. ET) has no Olympic or World Cup ramifications but is nevertheless a clash of superpowers in Impuls Arena in Augsburg, Germany, one of the venues for the 2011 World Cup.

“I wouldn’t say it’s friendly,” U.S. coach Pia Sundhage says. “It is really an vital match for all of us.”

“The buildup to this match feels different,” goalkeeper Hope Solo says. “We’re having more meetings, we’re watching film on Germany. They just got done winning the Euros, putting on quite a performance in the final (6-2 over England). Everybody knows they’re on top of their match right now.

“We’re getting the opportunity not only to play one of the best teams in the world, as prepared as they could be at this point in time, but also in a stadium with 30,000-plus people. You really can’t beat that.”

The U.S. team has noticed excitement in Germany. The match is sold out and will be on live television in Germany, though not in the USA.

Solo says she has seen signs all over town and some animated ads in the subway, and a group of players traveling in Munich attracted some curiosity.

“You can tell there’s a sense of pride for their women’s football team,” Solo says. “The last World Cup, they brought home the trophy to thousands and thousands of fans waiting for them when they stepped off that plane. To this day, seeing that, it gave me hope for something so much larger for what football for women could be.”

Small wonder Germany is placing such an emphasis on its World Cup defense on home soil. The players are remaining in the Bundesliga to be closer together heading into the tournament.

“Some of the games and some of the teams in the Bundesliga are as excellent as WPS,” Sundhage says. “The largest difference — all the players are professional in WPS. Every single match is competitive. I wouldn’t say that’s the same thing in Germany or Sweden or Norway. That is unique for WPS.”

With WPS’ first season completed, this match is the first chance to answer a couple of questions: How much has that sort of week-to-week pressure helped the U.S. players? And how will WPS play change the talent pool?

Ella Masar (Chicago) and Brittany Bock (Los Angeles) are looking for their first international appearances, and WPS play has helped Amy LePeilbet (Boston), Lori Lindsey (Washington/Philadelphia) and Yael Averbuch (Sky Blue) emerge or re-emerge with the team.

“We’re a very different team right now, no doubt about that,” Hope Solo says.

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Such defiant—some might say diva-ish—behavior is nothing new for Solo. At the 2007 World Cup in China, she started for the U.S., until the coach benched her for a semifinal match against Brazil, which the team lost, 4–0. After the match, Solo pointedly told a reporter, “There’s no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves.” The team subsequently banished her from its consolation match—and from its flight home. The next year, at the Beijing Olympics, under a new coach, Solo found some redemption by leading the U.S. to a gold medal. But she was criticized as a showboat for her victory prance around the field with an enormous fake gold medal dangling from her neck and a cell phone pressed to her ear. “No one’s neutral about Hope Solo,” says Angela Tavares, a writer for the soccer Web site Goal.com. “They either like her or despise her.”

But Solo’s polarizing persona is what makes her so crucial to the new league’s fortunes. The last professional women’s soccer league in the U.S., the Women’s United Soccer Association, lasted only three seasons—largely because it lacked edge. “The WUSA sort of had a focus on preteen, ponytailed girls who aspired to play soccer someday, and so their messaging was around ‘cause marketing’: ‘This league is something girls deserve to have, and as a fan you ought to support this,’” says Tonya Antonucci, a former Yahoo executive and the new league’s commissioner. “We’re presenting an environment that’s not about babysitting kids but is an opportunity to watch the best and be entertained by the best.”

In most professional sports, a large measure of that entertainment typically comes from booing, or at least rooting against, a villainous athlete. The best players in men’s sports have legions of admirers and detractors, whether it’s Kobe Bryant in basketball or Terrell Owens in football. Alas, many of the stars of women’s soccer have been too bland (at least in their public personas) to inspire much in the way of strong feelings, especially negative ones. Could anyone, for instance, dislike Mia Hamm?

Solo doesn’t have that problem. Indeed, her outburst at the World Cup, which drew the attention of ESPN and sports-talk radio, was one of the rare instances when women’s soccer entered the country’s broader sports discussion. Although Solo is considered by some to be the best goalkeeper in the world, it’s her off-field as much as her on-field reputation that has garnered her endorsement deals from Nike and VitaminWater. “She’s one of the few women players in America that has marketing value right now,” says Peter Wilt, the president of the Chicago Red Stars. “And a large part of it is because of her opinionated nature.”

Solo relishes being known as, in her words, “that loudmouth goalkeeper”—if only because she wants to be afforded the same liberties sports fans typically grant to male athletes: namely, the right to be a cocky jerk. “For some reason, people want to reckon that we’re girls next door, who all get along and go shopping at the mall together,” she told me. “Treat us like professional athletes.”

At the match the next night, it seemed that Solo was a long way from getting her wish. Most of the 5,000 or so fans who came to Harvard Stadium seemed to be the very same preteen ponytailed girls and glassy-eyed parents who had led the WUSA to its ruin. But one small sign augured well: a group of 30 or 40 Breakers fans—all adults, some apparently well-lubricated—who banged on drums and kept up a raucous stream of chants: “We despise So-lo,” they sang. “So-lo sucks!” The object of their scorn never acknowledged the jeers, but she must have secretly appreciated them. After all, as promised, Solo’s jersey that night wasn’t pink; it was red—like a matador’s cape.

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In the last 20 months Hope Solo, goalkeeper for the U.S. women’s national soccer team, suffered the loss of her best friend, who was hit by a car while running, and her father, who suffered a fatal heart attack. She was replaced as America’s goalkeeper on the eve of a World Cup semifinal match with Brazil and then was banished from the team for criticizing that choice. When allowed to return to the squad later under a new coach, she was treated as an outcast; most teammates wouldn’t sit with her at meals.

The worst spell of Solo’s life, but, turned positive this past summer. Back between the pipes for the national team, she made save after save in a stirring 1-0 victory over Brazil that gave the Americans the Olympic gold medal. Her stop of a point-blank Marta shot in the 72nd minute was the play of the tournament, and it was the kind of save that previous U.S. coach Greg Ryan questioned she could make when he pulled her from the lineup at the World Cup.

“It’s like a storybook ending,” Solo said after the Olympics. “It’s something you see in Hollywood or in fairy tales. My life doesn’t play out like that all the time.”

Pleased endings alone don’t merit the honor of Sportsperson of the Year. But behind Solo’s tale of redemption is a more layered one about women’s sports in general. As my colleague Grant Wahl wrote before the Olympics, the Solo affair raised many questions: “Did Solo’s outburst violate a team-first ethos that was a cornerstone of the U.S. women’s appeal and success, or was that mentality naive in the first place? Did her punishment fit the crime? And would it even have been imposed on a men’s team?”

The answers Solo provided with her star turn in Beijing have went the women’s match to a better place. No longer will the national team’s success be anchored to the notion of camaraderie, as if friendship matters more than foot skills. After the 1999 World Cup and throughout the Golden Girls era of Mia, Brandi and Julie, we were led to believe that, but it was a selective rendering. The U.S. won because they had the most talent and they played as a team. The “friends” angle was just that, an angle.

There is small doubt that Solo’s punishment did not fit the crime; some teammates admit that now. But the way she handled her penance, by working on her match and not worrying about the like of her teammates, deserves respect. There are conflicting personalities in every locker room, and not getting along off the field shouldn’t preclude a team from winning on it, especially not when the prize is a World Cup title or a gold medal.

Before the Olympics, Solo said: “We don’t have to be friends to respect what somebody does on the field. I truly hope women’s sports can get to that point.”

The women’s national soccer team has, and for that we can thank Hope Solo, a deserving Sportsperson of the Year.

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BEIJING — Amid the team bedlam of an Olympic gold medal celebration Thursday night, the star of the match, goalkeeper Hope Solo, peeled away to an empty part of the Workers Stadium pitch. No one was within 50 yards of her.

A solo operation, as is her style.

Moments earlier, the former University of Washington star and Richland native had pulled a cell phone from her stash bag next to the net she defended so magnificently in the U.S.’ 1-0 overtime win over Brazil.

So confident was she of a victory that she brought the phone onto the field so a call could be made immediately to her younger brother, Marcus, back in Washington. As alone as anyone could be in a stadium that held more than 50,000 people, she yelled into the phone.
Cameron Spencer / Getty Images
Goalkeeper Hope Solo celebrates as she speaks on her cell phone after the U.S. women’s soccer team defeated Brazil in the gold medal match to defend their 2004 Olympic title. Former UW star and Richland native Solo stashed the phone in the bag she kept next to the goal and called her younger brother back in Washington as soon as the match finished to tell him about the team’s victory.

“I told him, ‘We just won a damn gold medal!’ ” she said, laughing. “And bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep!”

Then she walked back to the sideline, where the entire team was being interviewed as a group by NBC. She passed them by, smiling, and went into the locker room. A few minutes later, she came out for her TV interview. Alone.

Hope Solo is a different kind of female team athlete. She feels no obligation to apologize for breaking the paradigm of the Mia Hamm/Brandi Chastain-led teams of previous Olympics and World Cups that offered an endearing, highly marketable chick-bonding camaraderie.

Following her for the rest of her days will be an outburst after a World Cup loss 10 months ago to these same Brazilians, also in China. She made national headlines by breaking the code among team sports, particularly with women, when she publicly criticized her coach and teammates.

Labeled a pariah, she was ostracized. Now she’s a hero. The U.S. is women’s soccer champion for the third time in four Olympics. Even she is bewildered.

“It’s like a storybook ending you see in Hollywood or fairy tales, yet it’s really playing out,” she said. “It’s nearly too perfect an ending. Nothing ever goes right with my family and my life. This is too perfect. I can’t really swallow it right now.”

It is an astonishing reversal. Her talent, not her headstrong words, was the decisive factor. The soccer federation had fired coach Greg Ryan and replaced him with Pia Sundhage, a Swede who previously coached China’s national team. A transformation was under way.

“I reckon the team changed for the better,” Solo said. “A lot of truth came out. It’s kind of a new role for female sports — we don’t have to be best friends to collaborate, place our hearts out on the field and win a gold medal.”

Solo joined her teammates for hugs, hand slaps, the medal ceremony and all the interviews. But she seemed apart, too — similar to the male sports culture of the huge home run hitter, the star wide receiver, the dominant basketball center. An alpha leader is not gender specific, nor is he or she the warmest.

Solo is one tough woman. And she was the difference.

The Brazilians completely outplayed the Americans. They had possession 58 percent of the match and had 16 shots on goal compared with 11 for the U.S., though it seemed the gap was wider.

Diving, leaping, stretching on a damp, slippery field, Solo was the formidable answer to the Brazilians’ superior speed and quickness.

“Hope Solo is a fantastic player,” said Brazil’s head coach, Jorge Barcellos, “especially on the crossing balls. She has a very strong sense of herself.”
Luca Bruno / AP
Hope Solo snags a high ball amid a crowd of players, including teammates Lori Chalupny, left, and Heather Mitts, during the women’s soccer gold medal match Thursday against Brazil.

Played to a scoreless tie in regulation in a stadium that had no match clock (perhaps because the civilization is 5,000 ancient, what’s a couple of hours?), the match turned in the 96th minute when Carli Lloyd’s booming left-footed shot from 18 yards out slipped past Brazilian goalie Barbara.

Even the scorer worked out poetically — Lloyd was the teammate who stuck closest to Solo the previous summer when she was shunned by others.

Solo, 27, also spent much of last year grieving the loss of her father, Jeffrey, who died of heart failure at 69, just a week before his daughter was to place on the U.S. uniform for the first time. He was her first soccer coach. She scattered some of his ashes on the field before every World Cup match.

It was Sundhage, the new coach, who helped with the repairs to attitude and soul.

“Pia is a fantastic leader,” Solo said. “She brought in new players and made a new style and system. You have to do that in order to win a medal.

“She let me be myself. No one was looking over my shoulder. I feel like my spirit is free.”

Thrilling as the medal was around her neck, Solo said it was incidental to the transformation.

“The medal has nothing to do with me feeling better,” she said. “The healing had already taken place. The healing had to take place in my heart and mind before I could even get to the medal.”

Sundhage understood that special talents require a different touch. That is never simple in a sports culture, male or female, that traditionally values equality and fraternity (or sorority) above all.

It doesn’t fit the stereotype, but much can be accomplished behind a solo leader.

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New coach selects both goalkeepers in preparation for Olympic qualifying

Goalkeepers Hope Solo and Briana Scurry, who were at the center of a World Cup firestorm, were invited to the U.S. women’s national team training camp by new coach Pia Sundhage.

The camp marks the beginning of the run to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The United States plays in the CONCACAF finals for Olympic qualifying April 2-13 in Chihuahua, Mexico. Two countries from the six-team tournament will advance to China.

It was in China where Solo was benched for the World Cup semifinals by then-coach Greg Ryan, who started veteran Scurry instead. The Americans played poorly, Scurry was beaten four times in a shutout loss to Brazil, and Solo bitterly criticized Ryan for the go.

Solo then was dismissed from the team, which won its third-place match.

Ryan subsequently was replaced by Sundhage, who invited 24 players to the training camp Dec. 8-12. The first games under Sundhage will be at the Four Nations Tournament in China early next year.

The minicamp roster features 16 players from the 2007 Women’s World Cup squad, along with seven players who recently finished their collegiate seasons. Defender Heather Mitts returns from a torn knee ligament last May that required surgery and caused her to miss the World Cup.

Longtime star and recent captain Kristine Lilly was not on the roster; Lilly has yet to choose if she will continue playing next year.

“It’s a small camp, but it will be valuable time spent together as a team and a unique moment for me to have a chance to work with the best players in the United States for the first time,” Sundhage said. “It will give us the chance to get to know them as players a small bit more, they’ll get the chance to learn my style and I’ll also get the chance to get to know them off the field. It will be a excellent start to something new.”

The roster:

GOALKEEPERS: Nicole Barnhart, Briana Scurry, Hope Solo.

DEFENDERS: Rachel Buehler, Marian Dalmy, Kate Markgraf, Heather Mitts, Christie Rampone, Cat Whitehill.
 Slide show: Week in Sports Pictures

   Week in Sports Pictures
Sorrow for Sean, NFL highlights, soccer fans battle cops, and more.
MIDFIELDERS: Yael Averbuch, Shannon Boxx, Lori Chalupny, Tobin Heath, Carli Lloyd, Leslie Osborne, Aly Wagner, Nikki Washington, Angie Woznuk.

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