USA women’s female goalkeeper Hope Solo, has accused the former FIFA President Sepp Blatter of sexually assaulting her by grabbing her butt at Fifa’s Ballon d’Or awards ceremony in January 2013.
Hope Solo, 36, revealed that the assault had taken place few seconds before they both went on stage to present an award to her colleague, striker Abby Wambach.
Talking about the sexual harassment she said, “I had Sepp Blatter grab my ass. It was at the Ballon d’Or, right before I went on stage. [Sexual harassment] has been normalised.
“I was in shock and completely thrown off, I had to quickly pull myself together to present my team-mate with the biggest award of her career and celebrate with her in that moment, so I completely shifted my focus to Abby.”
Solo is the most capped goalkeeper in US football history with 202 appearances, including in the 2008 and 2012 Olympic- and 2015 World Cup-winning teams. She spoke out about sexual harassment in sport, following the revelations about the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
She also disclosed that the reason she didn’t open up before is because she always tries to confront people directly, including team-mates, when it happens but didn’t get a chance to do so with Sepp Blatter, as they haven’t seen since the day of the incident.
81-year-old Sepp Blatter won five elections as president of Fifa from 1998 until 2015, until he was banned by the organisation for ethics breaches.
Blatter, contacted via his spokesman, responded to Solo’s recollection by denying that the incident took place.
“This allegation is ridiculous,” he said.