Hope Solo finally makes it to the Hall of Fame, along with Clint Dempsey and Shannon Boxx

After falling narrowly short in her first two years on the ballot, Hope Solo has finally earned induction into the National Soccer Hall of Fame. She was announced Sunday as one of three recent players to get the call, along with fellow U.S. women’s team legend Shannon Boxx and U.S. men’s team legend Clint Dempsey.

Solo began her pro career with the old WUSA’s Philadelphia Charge in 2003. She went on to become not just the best goalkeeper in U.S. women’s national team history, but arguably the best in all women’s soccer history: Olympic gold medals in 2008 and 2012, and a starring role in the 2015 World Cup triumph that ended a 16-year drought for the U.S. She also backstopped the team to the 2011 final, and won goalkeeper of the tournament in both World Cups.

Her success on the field was accompanied by controversy off of it. In 2014, she was arrested on domestic assault charges. The case was dismissed, then reopened in 2015. At the start of that year’s World Cup, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D) published a stern rebuke of the U.S. Soccer Federation for putting Solo on the team.

Blumenthal was countered by others, including then-U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati, who said Solo was denied a fair trial; and Jerramy Stevens, Solo’s husband, who called criticism from Blumenthal and various media members “a witch hunt.”

Also in 2014, Solo was suspended from the national team for 30 days after Stevens was arrested on drunk-driving charges while the pair was in a U.S. Soccer team van they had borrowed.

» READ MORE: Looking back at the Philadelphia Charge’s first season, 20 years after pro women’s soccer’s arrival here

Gulati turned against Solo after the U.S. team’s early elimination from the 2016 Olympics. The defensive tactics Sweden used to oust the Americans in a quarterfinal penalty-kick shootout caused Solo to call the winning players “cowards” in a TV interview. U.S. Soccer cut her from the team and ended her salaried player contract, and she never played for the national team again.

For as much criticism as there was of Solo’s off-the-field actions, there was also no lack of criticism of U.S. Soccer for cutting her when there wouldn’t be another major tournament for three years. And there was no lack of asking if a male athlete would have gotten so much negative publicity.

Solo was also involved in multiple legal actions against U.S. Soccer on equal pay over the years, including a 2018 lawsuit — separate from a suit filed by other players — and a 2018 complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Her club career ended at the end of 2016. She receded from public view for a while after that, save for some TV work. But the old frictions resurfaced in late 2019 when she first became eligible for Hall of Fame induction. Just 53.7% of voters that year put her name on their ballots.

At the time, the electorate was a wide pool of Hall of Fame members, past and present coaches, league representatives, and media — similar to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The following brought a big overhaul of the voting process. Now the work would be done by smaller, more engaged committees, similar to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

(This writer has been a Soccer Hall of Fame voter for many years, has been a voter on the recent player committee in both of its years so far, and has had Solo on his ballot in every year she’s been eligible.)

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The rule change included a new eligibility threshold: the top two candidates to clear 75% would get in. Four players cleared the threshold, but Solo was narrowly topped by Christie Pearce Rampone and Steve Cherundolo. Boxx finished fourth.

This year brought another rule change: if three players cleared 75%, they’d all get in.

When Dempsey, a pundit on Paramount+’s studio show for Sunday’s Concacaf men’s World Cup qualifiers, told Solo she had gotten in, she indicated that she wasn’t sure if she’d attend the ceremony.

“I’m a bit in shock, you guys, because I haven’t had a phone call for a couple years from the Hall of Fame committee — the last thing I expected was to hear it from you right now, Clint, here on air,” Solo said. “I’m obviously very proud to play for our country, but yeah, there’s a lot of politics sometimes involved, and sometimes you’ve got to get over that and you need to move forward. And I really have to think about what I’m going to do, personally, for myself.”

Solo added that she was “very honored, and I thank you for announcing it — and obviously putting me in a sense of shock for the world to see.”

The show’s host, Kate Abdo, likely spoke for many soccer fans when she told Solo: “Whatever you choose to do with the inauguration, hopefully it’s something that you can see is the soccer community wanting to respect you.”

Solo responded with a gesture of thanks.

Dempsey made it on the first ballot after a 14-year career that included 57 goals in 140 U.S. games, three World Cup trips, and distinguished club tenures at Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur, the New England Revolution and the Seattle Sounders. It was no surprise that he didn’t have to wait, as one of the elite players in the U.S. men’s team’s modern era.

Boxx, who won three Olympic golds (2004, ‘08 and ‘12) and one World Cup (’15), made it in her fourth year of eligibility.

Three other inductees will be in this year’s class. The veteran committee voted for Linda Hamilton, a U.S. women’s player in the 1980s and ‘90s who helped win the inaugural World Cup in 1991; and Marco Etcheverry, one of Major League Soccer’s original star playmakers.

Etcheverry will join a number of his former D.C. United teammates in the Hall, including fellow Bolivian Jaime Moreno, who was inducted last year. Together with Eddie Pope, Jeff Agoos and coach Bruce Arena, they won three of MLS’s first four championships from 1996-99.

The builder committee voted for Esse Baharmast, a former World Cup and MLS referee who has spent decades helping to develop new officials across the country.