The Striker and the Clock

Bloomsbury presents The Striker and the Clock written and read by Georgia Cloepfil.
An exhilarating and searing memoir about life as a professional female footballer - and a beautiful examination of the joy and pain of serious athletics
'Riveting ... A paean to the beautiful game' Los Angeles Times 'A compelling debut' Times Literary Supplement
In 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.
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 is a writer and a women's soccer coach. Cloepfil became infatuated with soccer as a child and throughout her twenties played on women's professional and semi-professional teams all over the world, from Korea to Australia to Sweden. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post and the Yale Review, as well as many other publications. The Striker and the Clock was shortlisted for the 2022 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize.
georgiacloepfil.com