The Striker and the Clock: On Being in the Game

by Georgia Cloepfil

An illuminating perspective on the life of an athlete and the pursuit of excellence outside the spotlight.

Georgia Cloepfil played professional soccer for six years, on six teams, in six countries. In those years, the sport became more than a game—it was an immersive yet transient way of life. In South Korea, she lived and practiced in an isolated island compound next to an airport. In Australia, she coached youth teams on the side to pay her rent. In Lithuania, she played in the European Champions League, to empty stadiums and little fanfare. She lived out of a single suitcase, chasing better opportunities and the euphoria of playing well.  

The Striker and the Clock is a beautiful examination of the joy and pain of serious athletics. It’s also an eye-opening look at the still-developing world of professional women’s soccer. Written in ninety short passages—reflecting the ninety inexorably passing minutes of a soccer match—the book is a love letter to a maddening sport and a reflection on the way it has shaped a life. In vivid prose, it portrays the athlete as an artist, debating how much of herself to devote to her craft. 

This finely wrought, singular book celebrates the complex appeal of sports and the fulfillment found in fleeting moments of glory.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Soccer

208 pages, Hardcover

First published July 16, 2024

Reviews

[Georgia Cloepfil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I wrote this book!

[Ilana Master · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this writer!

[Tom Mooney · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute revolution of sports writing - if Rachel Kushner had played professional football, she might have come out with something like The Striker and the Clock.

Cloepfil writes of a life in professional football, being a woman in sport, the empowerment yet harsh realities of the body for a female athlete, the ruthless march of time, the psychology of the striker, and so much more in this gloriously original book. There are no other sports books like this - I've never read any athlete quoting Woolf, Duras, and Miranda July in their memoir before.

It's also in that great little niche of sports books by people who have played professionally, but aren't big stars and face the brutal end of a remorseless industry. These are so much more interesting and insightful than hacky ghostwritten books by legends

So good.

[Nick Ihrke · Rating 5 out of 5]

In November Georgia Cloepfil visited my English class. We read the first 15 sections of this book in preparation and I was transfixed by it. I attend Cloepfil’s alma mater and run on the cross country and track teams there. Her intimate and vivid description of being in sport, of giving herself to sport, of suffering for sport and struggling to see life outside of it speak to me. I asked her a question about what it means for an elite athlete to articulate their own brilliance (and feel somewhat foolish asking it now, given that she answers my question and more in the later sections of the book.) Cloepfil fielded our questions deftly and with practiced ease. I was amazed by her living, breathing, cerebral-ness. Her apparent self awareness. I wanted to be more like her. I quickly purchased this book.

I think what I liked so much about this book is that it centers an experience that feels close to mine. An experience that I often think is ancillary to the living of a meaningful life. Why compete? Why repeat moment after moment, week after week the same actions in training? I completed an 80 mile week of training today. Why did I do it? Cloepfil articulates the inexplicable joy of success and the beauty of repeated training. This book helps me understand myself as a person and an athlete. Layered on top of this were meditations on pain, praise, the body vs the mind, and the intersection of feminism and sport. Seriously a brilliantly written book.

[Elijah Benson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that I feel so close to that it is hard to evaluate with any distance. So I won’t try to!

Cloepfil played professional soccer for years; I have never considered myself a professional at anything, including, really, my job. Cloepfil has an MFA from my Alma mater in writing; I dabble. But I feel connected to her in her search for the purpose of athletic pursuits (“What am I circling around”)–why does it feel so good? Why would some of us die for it?

My history as an athlete runs, at this point, for half my life. I am not counting the years spent in soccer leagues at my parents behest, or one embarrassing season of elementary school basketball, but the years, starting in middle school, cross country, where I gained the most basic awareness that my body had demands of me, and of the sort of mystical experience that I could have in response to them.

These demands have grown louder as I have learned to listen to them, though not necessarily any more sensical. I think that hearing them and being able to fulfill them are distinct skills, though sometimes it is enough to just be beckoned to. I recognize them also (and I think that they are the same ones) in the urge to write, the call to begin and see what comes next.

I sense a twofold purpose in both exercise and writing (and here language agrees: writing exercises, creative practice). One: the approach towards the boundaries of my capabilities, the knowledge that this approach might expand them, or get me close enough to sense their contours. Two: the dissolution, of myself into my body, my body into myself, perhaps better considered as a merging, though this feels simplistic, or a singularity, though this feels grandiose. But there is something of a collapsing to it–when I become not even aware only of my body but just a body unaware (“dumb,” per David Foster Wallace) but moving perfectly, or as perfectly as I have made it able to, or when I am not even writing but unfurling, left to consider afterwards what has appeared by some miracle on the page.

The joy in this is not the collapsing or the being collapsed or even the memory of having been collapsed. That memory does not exist. Cloepfil writes of “an above and below, a guillotine, a break, a threshold of wordlessness.” She says, “I can only approximate. I can only think backward and imagine.”

Probably, to do something beautiful with your body, to write something beautiful, would be a boring memory. To remember the body moving and reacting beautifully, the mind recalling and proffering beautifully, would be a recollection of simple, mechanical steps. I have done both so irregularly that I treasure this immemory. It lets me substitute, in false recollection, a sense of magic, one promised to me by so many books and movies and stories: that something may fall over me or be excavated from me, that I might be chosen.

My relationship with exercise was not initially driven by this feeling; I had the most basic awareness of it but no language for it. I was at first, and for years, motivated by the approval given to me by coaches and peers and parents for my above-average skill and my desire to improve.

It wasn’t until my senior year of college, two years after quitting the track team after to chronic injuries, that I learned that I could exercise for more. I had broken up with someone and was not sure that I could survive it. Every morning I ran though Moscow’s frosted, hilly sheep farm at the fastest pace my joints and lungs reported they could muster. I was running for the pain of it and, for the bare moments between when my body felt like it could not continue and when it suddenly learned that it could, the oblivion of no longer having a mind at all.

I have since found this feeling in the latter reps of heavy deadlifts, in heady moments above bolts on challenging climbs, in sex, in poems written and read. I have learned that it is not necessarily a negation of myself; it is actually best when it is the fullest manifestation of the work I have done, the practice and hours I have sunk in. The realization, afterwards, clearer now, but maybe not meaningful yet: I have chosen myself.

[Ben Donovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

this summer, I’ve recognized the peopleness of professional athletes in a new way. I think being in and exploring Seattle, a new place, this summer and then seeing Reign players younger than me move to and explore Seattle on instagram in a more unfiltered way than male pro athletes, it’s been a lot of recognizing humanity. Which made the timing of this book - a reflection on the life of a young woman from the PNW playing professional football abroad and in Seattle - nearly perfect? It has the quality of a first book in that there were awesome lines that were out of place where they ended up but probably felt essential so were shoehorned in. But with that, it had a clarity of purpose from being worked on for so long and a perspective I loved. Couldn’t put it down, sad it’s over. I have lots of assorted thoughts that are kinda bouncing around.

[Elma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very smart and enjoyable insights into the life of an adult athlete - and the uniqueness of semi-pro, the pursuit to pro, and that transition from D3 collegiate sports. I think there is probably very little like this out there! I have many team athletes and soccer players in my community that I would like to recommend this to. I can’t stop thinking about the dichotomy of the life of an athlete and a writer, a writer-athlete, an athlete-writer. And a nostalgic reminder that there is nothing like being on a team or immersed in a sport. (I simultaneously devoured Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders series and find these sub cultures soooo fascinating. Otherwise these two things are very much not alike🤪.) I didn’t totally connect to the Virginia Woolf references but no matter.

[William Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Recently, I overheard a stranger at a baseball game talking about visualization, the same technique I'd practiced before my soccer games. The key, he told his friend, was not vantage point but perspective. It was important to view the scene as if from your own eyes. Had I been doing it wrong the whole time? With my eyes closed, I had always watched myself from up above. Like a bird of prey searching for its meal.”

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a stunning, artful ode to soccer and an honest, heartbreaking rendering of the loss that comes with the end of a career. We are long overdue for exceptional writing about women’s sports and here it is. I loved that this wasn’t a “how I became a champion” narrative. Cloepfil writes about her experience as an athlete trying to extend her playing career beyond the glitzy spotlights of the USWNT or the NWLS, cobbling together a professional career overseas, playing thru injury and pain and uncertainty all for the love of the game. The writing is spectacular and deeply felt even if sports isn’t your thing, but if it is, wow, you’re going to love this.

[Sean McGowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent sportswriting on its own, then enters a dialogue with one of the genre's classics, DFW's review of Tracy Austin's memoir. If the "athletes die twice" adage is true (it is), then this is the autopsy. Writing about the experience of Just Having A Body is already so slippery, but to interrogate a life of obsessively honing your body into a specialized machine in the face of certain decay and in hopes of extremely uncertain, fleeting glory is a colossal achievement. I love sports! Love writing about sports! The answer to "why do we do this" is "what else is there to do?"

[Milo R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughtful meditations on soccer, writing, gender, transience, endurance, mortality (and, and, and!), all rendered in crystalline prose. A striking (sorry!) debut!!

[peyton!! · Rating 4 out of 5]

yeah that’s right everyone i went to the same college as her 😎

[Michael Elkon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderful read. A friend recommended it to me and I am glad that he did because Georgia triggered all sorts of interesting thoughts about the nature of being an athlete:

1. The importance of visualization and the difference between first- and third-person visualizing;

2. The gnawing knowledge for a pro athlete (or even a middle-aged guy like me who goes to the gym and rides a bike) that our bodies are generally losing speed and strength over time (hence the reference to the clock in the title);

3. The hurdles that women have to surmount to play pro sports, as evidenced by the fact that the US remains the best producer of women's soccer talent in the world (see: all those World Cup and Olympic titles) and yet Georgia had to go to South Korea, Norway, Lithuania, and Australia to keep playing;

4. The absolute focus and mental exhaustion that high-level athletes experience such that Cloepfil, a talented writer from a young age, did not have the brain space to write until her career was over; and

5. What goes on in the head of a smart striker during a match.

The closest analog I can find to this book is Ken Dryden's autobiography. That's the last time I read a memoir from a highly accomplished athlete who can also write and think like Georgia Cloepfil. I am going to recommend this book to family and friends.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

I really enjoyed this unique sports memoir. Cloepfil's soccer career ended just before the professionalization of the women's game made a huge leap, and she's honest (even blunt at times) about the inadequacies of the training facilities, coaching, and leagues at some of the clubs she played for. She also had the interesting perspective of playing across four different continents. I appreciated that Cloepfil didn't flinch away from addressing the less satisfying nuances of a sports career, which for the majority of athletes will end with some level of dissatisfaction. She also confronts the physical toll that extends long past one's playing career, the mental isolation borne from the transience of a nomadic existence on the fringes of professionalism, and the cold financial reality of playing in semi-pro leagues. The book has a clever format, with 90 (+1) short essays to reflect the 90 regulation minutes of a soccer game. I think this memoir would appeal even to non-soccer fans.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who knew? That passion and skill in a "game" could lead to the pursuit of a professional career. As parents we pushed our daughter to try all sports and to find the one she loved and excelled in. She played in the best clubs and got picked up by a college coach, as an entry into a better college. Georgia genuinely developed the love and skill that took her to the next step which as a parent it never occurred to me could happen. To be good enough and to love the sport enough to pursue it professionally. Georgia's memoire opened my eyes to the challenges of the next step that I never considered. It provided me an appreciation for so many athletes as they move through the sports system in an attempt to reach the pinnacle. Her honest and smart recollections in short passages provided perspective from so many vantage points on her progression through women's soccer, the reach for more and her reality that another path is viable. Georgia's talents clearly reach beyond soccer as she had the love, skill and insight to excel in writing to share this memoire, her first book.

[yasmin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love women's soccer, but this read one was not for me. I appreciate the format: 90 short pieces for a 90-minute match; thematically, it aligns with the stress of one's career ticking away, which this book circles around constantly (and successfully).

But Cloepfil writes that this book comprised seven years of writing, and this was part of why the book didn't land with me. It felt at once underbaked and overwrought, like I could tell which essays were older, which were reworked, which were newer… It also gave the effect of having many offshoots of ideas that I don't think emulsified but sat separately. And the abundance of quoted books, podcasts, and articles felt neither cohesive within the individual essays themselves nor among one another.

However (!) I think this book is a great read if you don't mind some eclectic essays and/or if you're interested in learning more about the lived experience of women's professional footballers + the history, politics, and cultural battles that are part and parcel with women's soccer. :-)

[Mo Holub · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard to explain the exact mixture of nostalgia, joy, and melancholy this book wrung out of me in it's short but powerful pages.

It is hard to explain the feeling of being an athlete in memory, in learned movements and redirected passion, in stories and instincts and past-tense, but Georgia Cloepfil put into words what bangs around in my heart when I think of soccer. A lyrical and poignant tribute to the beautiful game and the people it turns into players, into teams, into champions, and eventually back into people. Both what that means, and how that feels, is a shared experience among athletes that we are never quite sure how to share; a little death all our own. Thank you, Georgia, for shining a light on this unique grief.

Like the game, the ticking clock of turning pages was leading me to an ending I wasn't sure I wanted to reach yet. Give me one more minute, one more chapter in the environment of the game, in the feeling. But the clock winds down.

[Jeffrey Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book by a new author Georgia Cloepfil. She played soccer professionally for six years in six countries on four continents. She really gives you insight into the soul of an athlete who does what she does for the love of the sport. Her professional gigs were on the fringes of international soccer as she moves each year to a new country in search of the one situation that will allow her to flourish. The book's format is unique - there are 90 "chapters" each a short vignette that represents one minute of a 90 minute soccer match. In it she mentions that a few teachers recognized her writing ability in high school while she was also recognized for her soccer prowess. You can see the soul of the athlete and the writer in these pages and let's hope this is not the last we have heard from Ms. Cloepfil.

[Elly · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 - This was so beautifully written and touched on every topic about the beautiful game. As a writer and (former) soccer player, this book hit really close to home — pages of it could've been taken from my own diaries.

Told in short vignettes, The Striker and the Clock details former professional soccer player Georgia Cloepfil's career from childhood to years after her last game. I picked up this book without knowing who Georgia was, and she was still able to captivate me the entire time.

I enjoyed every existential thought, every question asking "Is this really worth it in the end?", and every time Georgia spoke about writing. Her insights about professional soccer abroad were equally as interesting. Considering that I didn't see her play, I'm so glad she wrote this.

[Darius Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Audiobook) I really really enjoyed this; Cloepfil captures the essence of not only being an athlete, but also the aspects of being a "minor league" athlete who has dedicated their life in pursuit of both the concrete goals of athletic achievement but also the amorphous goals of athletic contentment. She takes us through her soccer career that leads her all over the world, with numerous vignettes about life as an athletic nomad and how one copes with such a life. Her descriptions of the psychology of sport, from unadulterated bliss that one experiences from the finest of details to the slow deterioration of one's dreams and abilities, and acceptance that those things which define oneself must be let go.

"You can write like that because you worry about the goal kicks."

[helen reinhold · Rating 3 out of 5]

“if we are lucky, when we are young, we get to feel the full sense of our own potential. we are all possibility. nothing has happened to us yet, so anything might. the people we knew back then are special to us because they will always remind us of a time before our life happened. i’m not in touch with most of the teammates i grew up playing with; i haven't talked to anyone from my high school team in more than ten years. but still, my memories of life's big events circle around soccer. the sport was my witness. i try not to stray too far from it, so i can remain in touch with all the versions of myself that it conjures.”

[Red Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having a daughter who is a professional soccer player, I really enjoyed reading this frank and realistic portrait of the challenges of playing women's professional soccer. The choppy diary-like format took some getting used to, but over time the short chapters weaved together. I did like this - "But a belief in immortality is only available to the spectator. Halls of fame and records and medals and posters are most meaningful to fans. The job of the athlete is not to mythologize her own life. Instead, she confronts mortality directly, unavoidably. The job of the athlete is to navigate unrelenting decay."

[Susie Dumond · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a book lover and huge women's soccer fan, I'm pretty sure this book was written specifically for me. But it's also beautifully crafted and carries so much meaning beyond the sport! At its heart, it's about dedicating your life to something you love, even when it doesn't go the way you planned or forces you to make big sacrifices. Georgia Cloepfil is a really talented writer, and I love how she structured this memoir around the 90 minutes of a soccer match. A perfect read ahead of watching the US women's national team compete at the Summer Olympics!

[Byram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Told in small “90-minute” chapters, this is a beautiful and visceral and real account of a woman dedicating her life to the game that she loves in the face of a still emerging professional system, the pains of training, the mental challenges of leaning in without giving in. Of learning new cultures and new languages, suffering humiliations and hardships big and small, scrounging together effort and money, all to make it in the game she loves. Very eye-opening to see this early pioneer just on the edges of elite professional soccer, and very well written

[Andrew Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an all time favorite of mine now. One of the most beautifully written books I've read that truly explores its central theme - the writer's relationship to time in all its variations as a professional footballer. Exploring her body, moving between countries, time on the pitch, training, medical procedures, and more Cloepfil gives the reader a genuine sense of not only her experiences (notably the turmoil and constant change of the life of a professional athlete) but also how sport is art. I'm excited to reread this one again soon.

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Proud of myself for actually reading something on my to read list. Written by a Mac alum, it had the nerdy Macalester magic hidden amongst a book that was at first glance "merely" about sports. As someone who has read one too many average sports memoirs, this had all the nuance and more that I wished most of those had. Her reflections on sport and life reflected many of my own as also a student athlete at Mac. I loved the way Cloepfil sees sports as a an undertaking with emotional, artistic depth.

[KatG · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a story or a memoir really. It is snippets of life, an examination of what it’s like to be a professional female athlete. 91 short chapters, each its own moment of reflection. There is no plot to be seen here. Honestly this is not for me, and my personal opinion would be to give it 2 stars b/c I was just sort of bored without a story to follow. But I recognize it’s not *bad*, it’s just not for me. Maybe if you’re an athlete or super in to soccer… but I had to really force myself to complete it.

[Annabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

bought this book for my soccer player sister and read it in her dorm and during halftime and after the game. really beautiful writing and really thoughtful reflections on what it means and feels like to want something, to love something, to have a dream and chase it… liked the minute by minute conceit even if i sometimes wondered what the logic between minute assignments was (ultimately didn’t care; was just curious). recommend to all soccer players and/or people who love soccer players/athletes/former athletes

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't want to call the author a journeyman because that sounds less than what I mean, but she is a professional soccer player that isn't famous and had to move from team to team in order to earn a living. I really love that perspective. She talks about injuries and travel and loneliness and living in foreign countries. And the format of short chapters for each minute of a soccer game is really quite clever.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was neeeeeever ever a sports girl until I married into an English, soccer loving family, and I started watching the premiere league and learning more about soccer. My husband suggested this book to me and I ATE it up. The prose? Stunning. At times I felt like I was reading a philosophy book the way that God, art, and mortality were discussed. Just so phenomenal, really really loved it. Even if you have no interest in sports, I implore you to read this. Chefs kiss.