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 'It contained so much of what I love and find endlessly interesting about football ... A very lovely thinker and writer' Rebecca Watson '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.