Soccerwomen: The Icons, Rebels, Stars, and Trailblazers Who Transformed the Beautiful Game [Paperback]

From Michelle Akers to Megan Rapinoe, bold and inspiring profiles of the pioneers, champions and future heroines of women's soccer around the world.

Womens soccer has come a long wayfrom its origins as a matchmaking custom in the Scottish Highlands through countrywide bans, cast-off mens uniforms, and practices in parking lots, to a global sport attracting hundreds of millions of viewers.

This is the history of the game told through the players themselves, the world-famouslike Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, and Brazils Martaas well as the long-forgotten, unsung talents, and rising stars. These women are not just first-rate athletes, they are fighters who have battled everything from inequality and discrimination to racism and homophobia. Their determination has propelled the womens game through decades of disdainful treatment to help shape the political landscape far beyond their sport.

Based on original interviews with dozens of current and former players and coaches, this book celebrates these remarkable women and their pioneering achievements.

Gemma Clarkeis a British sports journalist based in the US. She has written about soccer forThe Guardian, theObserver,The Times(UK),The Daily Telegraphand theLondon Evening Standard. 

An excellent, thoughtful read about a topic that has had scandalously little coverage. Women's 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 By tracing women's 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 re-telling 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 wantlƒ#