Thanks. I re-read Horan/Morgan/Rapinoe's statements.

They said nothing wrong. I found their responses to be fairly restrained in fact.

Horan/Morgan/Rapinoe have won WC's and are ensconced in the culture and heritage of the team. Albert is an extremely talented 20-year-old who all of these leaders want to succeed -- she isn't a threat to them given their age, and they want to win. The reason they are exasperated is because of 1/ how serious these breaches of her teammates' trust are, and 2/ the fact that they were self-inflicted and therefore entirely avoidable.

We agree that the Achilles thing is indefensible. I don't really understand why Rapinoe's comment about no god makes Albert's liking the post any less bad. I think we differ in terms of how serious we think this was. These women devote their lives to this sport. They are all incredible athletes who work their asses off. The spectre of a horrible injury is always a looming nightmare. Making light of an Achilles rupture, or outright rooting for one, is the sort of thing that teammates will take a long time to forgive. And the only excuse is that she was only 20 and clearly brought up the wrong way. She can come back from it, but man, that's really massive breach.

Adding to that is that she willingly reposted other content that is pretty straightfowardly homophobic. It is a simple fact that the USWNT pool is disproportionately LGBTQ, as is their fanbase. As George in "Hoosiers" says, "There are two kinds of dumb: a guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and howls at the moon, and a guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don't matter, the second one you're sorta forced to deal with." It isn't political with them, it is personal. You can find Rapinoe annoying (as I do) or find the team's activism offensive (as you might, and as other posters in this thread do, and as Trumpster Alexi Lalas clearly does) and still understand how profoundly personally offensive Albert's posts were to many women on this team.

I am a huge ND fan and an even bigger US soccer fan. I want Albert to succeed; she's an incredible talent. But she has dug herself a massive hole, and needs to make real amends. Her apology was pretty half-assed, and deflecting blame from her because you don't like Rapinoe or "the Twitter mob" doesn't help fix the situation.

Appreciate your respectful back-and-forth, have a great weekend.