Named one of the best sports books of the year by Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter!
As a child Joachim had three dreams: to become the top scorer in the Norwegian football league, to play for the Norwegian national team and to play in a foreign league.
Now Joachim is 31, and all those dreams have come true. For many years he has been making a comfortable living as a football player, but his contract with one of Norway’s premier clubs is running out and he fears that his career is approaching its end.
Joachim becomes self-centred and tense, his obsessions haunt him with increasing frequency, his training gets worse, his partying harder and he gets more injuries than he used to. Girls come and go in Joachim’s life, but one of them distracts him more than the others. His focus slipping, he starts making some serious mistakes.
Stavrum’s entertaining and insightful tale of the darker sides of life as a football star was met with great reviews on its Norwegian publication. The largest Swedish morning paper, Dagens Nyheter, named No More Free Kicks one of the best sports books of 2008.
