Exploring the duality of joy and pain in athletics, this book presents an intimate look at the life of a professional female soccer player who experienced the sport across six teams and countries. Structured in ninety short passages mirroring the duration of a soccer match, it serves as both a tribute to the game and a commentary on the evolving landscape of women's soccer. Through vivid prose, it captures the essence of an athlete's journey, portraying her as an artist grappling with the balance between passion and self.
An exhilarating and searing memoir about life as a professional female footballer - and a beautiful examination of the joy and pain of serious athleticsIn The Striker and the Clock, Georgia Cloepfil tells the story of her life in football: the triumph, the exhilaration, the deep bonds between teammates, and also the years of self-denial, exile and dedication, in which players try in vain to outpace a clock that ticks down toward an indeterminate ending.Threading between floodlit pitches, sparse dorm rooms, and doctor's offices, Cloepfil outlines an obsessive pursuit: one that sees her begin each day by touching the ball a thousand times, running sprints alone on empty fields and practicing near-constant visualization and revisualization of triumph and despair.What emerges is a profound meditation on what it is to have a body, and what it is to have the compulsion to push it to do the near impossible; and a love letter to the motivations, joys, pains and desires of a beautiful game.'Georgia Cloepfil has written a nimble, breathtaking book about the beautiful game, and about her beautiful, brutal life playing it' Louisa Thomas, sports writer for the New Yorker 'With the deft and determined movements of a seasoned player, Georgia Cloepfil writes about what it means to endure and what it means to leave a sport behind' Leanne Shapton
