Publishers Weekly
05/20/2024
Former professional soccer player Cloepfil debuts with a spare but potent account of her nomadic years on the field. In 90 short, meditative chapters (one for each minute of a soccer game), Cloepfil catalogs the highs and lows of her tenures on club teams in the U.S., Australia, Sweden, South Korea, Lithuania, and Norway across the 2010s, noting the elation she felt on the field and sexism she faced off of it. She underscores the persistent pay gap between men’s and women’s players (in the Australian Premier League, women made nothing for playing, while men took home a $1,000 weekly honorarium), highlighting the work she took coaching and writing newsletters just to keep the lights on during some seasons. Still, she evocatively captures the thrill of victory (one high school win in Oregon has her screaming with “enormous, animal relief”) and stresses that she would still be playing had she not suffered a series of debilitating injuries (“I miss it every moment of every day, I will for the rest of my life”). It amounts to an intimate glimpse at the determination and drive required to hack it in pro sports. Even casual soccer fans will devour this. Agent: Laura Usselman, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (July)
From the Publisher
"Riveting. . . . A paean to the beautiful game, the book chronicles how Cloepfil overcame adversity to strike joy." —Los Angeles Times
“A marvelous love letter to soccer and a testament to the drive and determination of professional female athletes. . . . Athletes and non-sports fans alike will enjoy this beautifully written memoir.” —Booklist, starred review
“Spare but potent…An intimate glimpse at the determination and drive required to hack it in pro sports. Even casual soccer fans will devour this.” —Publishers Weekly
“A poetic, heartfelt tribute to the beautiful game.” —Kirkus Reviews
"Celebrates the beauty of soccer while showing the sacrifices elite athletes make to stay in the game. . . . A thoughtful and engaging exploration of life on and off the soccer field." —Library Journal
“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, author of Swimming Studies
“This book is for anyone who has ever loved something with everything they had, anyone who has ever turned themselves over to glory, joy, and worship. A necessary and long-awaited entry into the literary sports canon, The Striker and the Clock is a transcendent love affair and an act of devotion.” —Marisa Crane, author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself
“Georgia Cloepfil has written a nimble, breathtaking book about the beautiful game, and about her beautiful, brutal life playing it. It reveals so much about the strange, hard path of a young woman pursuing a career as a professional soccer player, but it is far more interesting than an ordinary story of passion, promise, setback, and success. It is, instead, a cleareyed exploration of what passion, promise, setback, and success even mean.” —Louisa Thomas, author of Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams
“This book introduced me to the poetry of soccer and the humble nomad that is the professional female soccer player. Cloepfil’s accomplishments and sacrifices while on the clock left me inspired; her talent on the page has me in awe.” —Courtney Maum, author of The Year of the Horses
"With swift and elegant prose, Georgia Cloepfil has written not merely a contemplation on sport and the sporting life, but rather a lyrical exploration on the myriad ways to move forward—be it toward a goal, a dream, that dream's end, or toward a glimpse of the sublime itself. The Striker and the Clock serves as a poignant reminder that both art and sport can gift us fleeting encounters with the extraordinary." —Chloé Cooper Jones, two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and author of Easy Beauty
Library Journal
06/01/2024
Unlike many sports memoirs that focus solely on the achievements and challenges within the game, former professional soccer player Cloepfil's book intertwines reflections about her personal growth with the narrative of her career in a uniquely crafted format. Structured in 90 short chapters, one for each minute in a soccer match, her book artfully parallels the ebb and flow of the game with details about her personal and athletic evolution. From the exhilaration of new beginnings to the bittersweet conclusion of her career, each passage captures the essence of her journey as it highlights the joys and challenges of pursuing excellence in a competitive field. Her nomadic experience playing for six years on six teams in six countries offers insight into the life of a professional women's soccer player. The book celebrates the beauty of soccer while showing the sacrifices elite athletes make to stay in the game. VERDICT A thoughtful and engaging exploration of life on and off the soccer field. It will resonate with readers interested in the human side of professional sports and fans of When Nobody Was Watching by Carli Lloyd with Wayne Coffey, Abby Wambach's Forward, and Raised a Warrior by Susie Petruccelli.—Sara Holder
Kirkus Reviews
2024-05-04
A former professional soccer player shares her memories of the game.
During her career, Cloepfil once told one of her younger siblings what she considered the greatest feeling in the world: “scoring a goal.” Throughout her career as a striker, that opinion didn’t change, despite the many injuries she had to endure and the challenges she faced as a woman athlete. This book is Cloepfil’s tribute to the game she loves and a memoir of her decade of competition. The author moves back and forth in time, chronicling her soccer-obsessed Oregon childhood as a daughter of supportive parents who were athletes in their own rights—her mother was a state champion sprinter, her father “captained his perpetually winless high school football team”; years in which she “played in six countries, on four different continents: Australia, Sweden, Korea, Lithuania, United States, Norway”; and the sexism she and other women athletes had to contend with, from the dismissive attitude toward women’s sports to the fact that, in Australia, women played for free, whereas male players in the same division earned over $1,000 per week. The text consists of 90 short chapters, most of them only a page or two, each one named for a minute of play, plus a chapter in the middle titled “Halftime.” Their terseness robs the narrative of depth and prevents it from venturing beyond the anecdotal. Fortunately, most of the anecdotes are amusing and informative, and, like many soccer devotees, Cloepfil gets winningly philosophical about the game—e.g., when she notes that a match’s duration is “a temporal perimeter of an hour and a half” or states, “The beginning of the game, like the beginning of a life, is bloated with possibility.”
A poetic, heartfelt tribute to the beautiful game.
