Clarke - Soccerwomen: the icons, rebels, stars, and trailblazers who transformed the beautiful game

By tracing womens soccer from its earliest days to the young women breaking out onto the pitch right now through short biographies of some of the best women to play the sport, Clarke provides a comprehensive retelling of soccer through the words and experiences of the women themselves. This is a book of heroes, but also a book about athletes, who just want to play the game they love. And it is, of course, about triumph in the face of discrimination and diversity. It doesnt take long into the book to start to question why anyone wouldnt choose to support these athletes, forget actively working against them to keep them off the pitch. And not long after that, youll find yourself cheering these women on, fist-pumping their achievements, and standing in awe of what they have done.

Jessica Luther, award-winning journalist, cohost of the feminist sports podcast Burn It All Down, and author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct

An excellent, thoughtful read about a topic that has had scandalously little coverage. Womens soccer needs its own heroes and legends. Gemma Clarke is helping to create them. She put her heart into this book, and it shows.

Simon Kuper, Financial Times columnist and coauthor of Soccernomics

Where we are now with womens soccer is because of all those whove come before. And my goodness what stories they can tell. In this engrossing read, Gemma Clarke not only shares the battle it has taken to get women onto a football pitch, but then goes on to introduce us to players the world over who we must thank for putting the 2019 Soccerwomen in a better place. These are stories that have at the very heart of them what it really means when we use such phrases as fighting against all odds. If you want to see what that looks like, over and over again, in its many forms, youll find it in these quite brilliantly written pages.

Rebecca Lowe, NBC Sports anchor

Soccerwomen charts the remarkable route of the worlds most determined female footballers and coaches through fine storytelling and honest testimony. This book is rich with historical detail and personal anecdotes that bring to life the characters, their love of the game, and the way the trailblazers overcame challenges to influence the most popular sport on earth. Gemma Clarke writes with passion, precision, and context in this important work. It puts into action the sentiment of the final words: To anyone who has ever been told they cant do the thing they love: dont listen. Do it anyway.

Amy Lawrence, football writer for the Guardian and Observer

You could describe Gemma Clarkes Soccerwomen as a whos who of womens soccer. But it is so much more than that. Her charting the birth of womens soccer in the munitions factories of England to the nuances of its development in the US and the fights for equal rights and pay, better conditions, and just the right to play, is peppered with the rich stories of some of the games most well-known namesand those less well known but deserving of a place in the spotlight. Rich storytelling brings to life players sporting achievements and their off-field battles, including homelessness, alcohol abuse, injury, concussion, parenthood, the effects of natural disasters, and war and sexuality. An inspirational read that will tell any young or aspiring player going through a difficult time that they can make it and they are not alone.

Suzanne Wrack, womens soccer correspondent for the Guardian

To Stark, Griffin, and Devon.