The Striker and the Clock

May 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.

June 1, 2024
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.

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June 1, 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

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2024
Cloepfil's debut book is a marvelous love letter to soccer and a testament to the drive and determination of professional female athletes. Using the minutes in a soccer game as chapter titles, she describes the six years she spent playing professional soccer and the mindset an athlete must have to succeed. She's unafraid to write about overlooked subjects: how an athlete's performance can be affected by her period, how prime playing years often overlap with a woman's prime childbearing years, and how female athletes still get paid less than their male counterparts while training and playing in facilities that pale in comparison to men's. Cloepfil's writing, balanced with sentiment and truth, makes this book an especially great read. More than an ode to soccer, it's a meditation on life and the ups and downs everyone faces. The theme that connects the entire book together is how the drive to be the best never goes away, even as one's body is saying it's time to quit. "Please let this be over," Cloepfil thinks. "Then: I'm not ready for it to be over." Athletes and non-sports fans alike will enjoy this beautifully written memoir.

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