To All the Footballers I Loved Before: The Fangirl Chronicles, #2

By C.M. Kars

All the footballers a fangirl has loved in the past…don't compare to the footballer of her dreams.

 

When Maddie Chase, a fangirl and pro footballer, gets injured before her debut for the world-renowned Southgate FC, she enlists the help of a fellow injured comrade-in-arms, the phenom player Jesse Windmeier, to get her back on her feet.

 

Maddie just didn't expect him to be a giant pain in her ass when they train together or distract her from getting back on the field with his talent and good looks. When Jesse realizes that training Maddie has quickly become the highlight of his day and wants to spend more time with her, Maddie doesn't know what to do.

Her life has always been about achieving her one goal - playing pro and winning all of the accolades. And Jesse...Jesse's become something of a distraction.

 

Can Maddie strike a balance between getting back on the field and whatever is budding between her and Jesse? Or will she turn her back on him for her name in shining lights?
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.M. Kars
• Release date: Jun 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990603020

Book preview

OTHER WORKS BY C.M. KARS

The Never Been Series

Never Been Kissed

Never Been Nerdy

Never Been Loved

Never Been Under the Mistletoe

Never Been Boxed Set

The Fangirl Chronicles

Fangirling Over You

To All the Footballers I Loved Before

Bias Wrecked

Pucked Romance

Never Say Never

The Cuffing Season Series

Get Cuffed

Cuffing and Turkey Stuffing

Cuffing and Tree Trimming

Cuffing New Year’s Resolutions

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TO ALL THE FOOTBALLERS I Loved Before

Book Two, The Fangirl Chronicles

By C.M. Kars

Copyright © 2021 C.M. Kars

All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Cover design by Indigo Chick Designs

Editing by Aquila Editing

V1.0 DRAFT2DIGITAL 2022.02.10

ISBN (ebook) 978-1-990603-02-0

ISBN (paperback) 978-1-990603-03-7

Contents

AUTHOR’S NOTE

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

BIAS WRECKED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Hello!

Because this is a fictional world (and I do what I want), I created the Women’s Prime League (the top tier professional league for female footballers), and its male counterpart, the Men’s Supra League.

In the following pages, you’ll learn some of the team names that I’ve created for these two leagues, a lot of these just being plucked from city names in the English countryside.

I am aware that most of these counties/towns/cities have amateur football clubs, but I included them as part of my fictional professional leagues. I hope you don’t mind.

If there is any offense to anyone, please be so kind as to let me know at: cmk (at) authorcmkars (dot) com.

I played soccer (what we call football here in Canada) my entire childhood and teenage years and loved it. I have a great amount of respect for the sport and its players of any gender.

All mistakes are my own.

As it stands, each team competes for three cups during the regular season:

The League Cup (whoever gets first place within the Prime League or the Supra League in a round-robin style)

Winner of the European Football Association Cup (where all club teams across Europe compete against one another in a knockout competition)

Victor’s Cup (where all the top-tier teams across Europe compete against one another in a knockout competition)

The regular league season is played from August to May for a total of 36 games for the men and a total of 22 games for the women, along with all other games (or fixtures) in competing for different cups.

I hope that despite the new language of sorts, if you’re not familiar with football, you can still find enjoyment from this story where a female professional footballer and a male professional footballer fall in love and get their own happily ever after.

Enjoy,

C.M. Kars

MEN’S SUPRA LEAGUE (some team names)

Southgate FC

Mitcham United

Queen’s Park FC

Reading FC

Nottingham Forest FC

WOMEN’S PRIME LEAGUE (some team names)

Southgate FC

Mitcham United

Queen’s Park FC

Reading FC

Nottingham Forest FC

POSITIONS

STRIKER – player who scores the goals, center forward

FULLBACK – defenders (protecting their goalie from the opposition scoring goals)

MIDFIELDER – players play the middle of the field, playing both offensively and defensively

SWEEPER – the last line of defense, behind the fullbacks

WINGER – an attacking player (offense) on either the left wing or right wing of the field.

DEFENSE

OFFENSE

ONE

The very first time I fell in love I was six years old, and I fell in love with one of the greatest football players in the entire world at the time.

I remember sitting in front of the TV, too close to the screen so that the picture was distorted, my dad putting on a game. I remember the bright green of the soccer field may have caused some damage to my eyes.

I was entranced, even back then.

I was mesmerized by the crisp white lines on the pitch, designating the halves, the lines running up and down on either side of the field that keep the ball in play. And then there was the ball, a tiny spherical thing that could be kicked great distances across the field, a tiny speck to the camera in most cases until you got a real close-up of the magic that happened between a talented player’s feet.

Although I didn’t know what the sport was called back then, I knew with the fervent conviction of a six-year-old that I wanted to be a soccer player when I grew up. Or like they call it over here in my new home away from home, a professional footballer in the Women’s Prime League, the female counterpart to the men’s professional football league here in England.

I fell in love with one of the greats back then, an Italian player by the name of Giovanni di Laurentis, who made magic with the ball that no one could touch them. And in my six-year-old mind, that was it, that was love, this admiration I felt, this want to be him, and it started my lifelong journey to make it to the pros even though I was born with ovaries instead of a dick, and women’s football has started making the impact it needs to, finally, where the fans are crazier than the players.

It all started with Giovanni di Laurentis, fifteen years ago, while I stared slack-jawed at the TV screen, watching him use his superpower to fight off the defensive players, line up a pass right into the middle of the penalty box, and his teammate drive it home.

Chaos. Elation. These are the things I felt fifteen years ago, my little arms held up to the sky, mimicking my dad as he shouted GOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!! for all of the street to hear and then grabbed me up in his arms and proceeded to lift me on his shoulders and run around our living room in a tiny town in Ontario, Canada, where the national sport is lacrosse, and the real kind of football isn’t that important to watch when it’s compared to hockey.

But I knew what I wanted to do back then, and I’ve finally made it this far, the night before my debut on the pitch for the English Women’s Prime League, playing for one of the most renowned all-female professional teams, backed by a hundred years of history: Southgate FC, colloquially known as The Hounds.

It all started with Giovanni di Laurentis.

I’ve loved football players before, of course, and as I grew up, my playing style changed with whoever I was obsessed with at the time, learning speed and accuracy from the greats like Harold Stone, Jonathan Baker, and Fernando de la Vega; I learned tricks from Étienne Houde and Pavel Lucic, and I have given a piece of my heart to every single one of them over the years.

It all started with Giovanni di Laurentis.

But it didn’t end with him, not by a long shot.

JULY... PRE-SEASON friendly

I have the world’s worst luck. I am the ancient meme of bad luck, a knight in full shining armor getting an arrow through the practically microscopic eye-slit of his helmet; that’s how lucky I am.

I was feeling good, you know, completely and super hyped? Okay, homesick as hell, and I found myself getting lost with how much I missed home and my old routine; I missed controlling my own training schedule and what I ate and what I decided to binge on. But this is something else.

Yeah, it’s all I ever wanted, sure, but I thought there would be something...more? I thought it would be better?

Why did it feel like any other training day when I was supposed to be hyped that I was finally going to debut for Southgate for the upcoming season?

I ignored the sick feeling in my belly, the queasiness that made me uneasy, stomach lined with lead weighing me down, dragging down to my legs so I felt like I couldn’t move my feet fast enough, couldn’t get to the ball fast enough in my first game with the team.

I even got an elbow to the face as I was going after the ball, half-muttering to myself to go faster when this bitch clocks me one and I end up losing my bearings, and hence, the ball.

I shook it off, because what else was I going to do when it was nothing more than an exhibition game to find my feet, my stride instead of doing it all in the season opener?

I just kept nosediving though, being brought down like quicksand as I realized with every chance I got to shine, I just couldn’t, that my spot was going to be taken by someone else because I just couldn’t bring my A-game to the exhibition match.

So I pushed too hard, I overextended myself when I shouldn’t have been doing any of that.

But this moment? This very moment here on the field, where everything feels good and right? It’s been fifteen years in the making.

All the blood, sweat and tears that I’ve left out on the pitch, my favourite place on the planet, all the heartache that made me realize that I don’t have that golden talent that would make me the greatest player there ever was, that wouldn’t lend me the chance to make my name known across football history, and I had to work twice as hard as anyone else to get what I wanted felt like it wasn’t worth shit.

And now it’s slipping away, like sand sifting through my fingers.

I’m going to blow it. I know I’m going to blow it, even as I run full-out.

You have to risk it to get the biscuit.

I’m tired, panting enough that I’ve got a stitch in my side and my pores yawned wide open so that I’m drenched in sweat, huge stains under my arms, under my boobs and across my back. It feels like I’ve never sweated so much in my entire life, but it’s fitting, isn’t it? Like a movie scene where the athlete protagonist is broken down by physical exertion only to rise up one more time and make it.

That’s how this was supposed to play out.

I was going to have a Rocky moment running up those steps to that museum in Philadelphia after running around the whole city, arms raised high in triumph when I earned my spot on the team.

Except life isn’t a movie, and I didn’t pay enough attention when I messed up my leg—my first injury in professional football, the whole thing a blinding haze of pain.

I vaguely remember screaming, holding onto my quad and knee like I was trying to hold them together as I collapsed ass-first onto the turf, howling while the team started to crowd around me. My foot rolled over the ball and I wasn’t paying enough attention and I killed my leg. I killed my leg.

I had a dream to become a great professional footballer, and I was so close I could taste it, so close I could feel the official jersey with my name on the back of it, crisp and ready to be seen by the audience who pay for the regular season games, by those who are as fanatical about football as I am.

I was ready to be known; I was ready to make my mark.

And then this happens.

Torn meniscus, thigh strain, and something that ends in ‘itis’. With those words, I’m out for the count for six to eight weeks, with all the other injuries combined.

Six to eight weeks feels like a goddamn lifetime, an eternity.

God, I let everyone down, I let the team down, I let my coaches down. Worst of all, I let myself down ’cause I was too deep inside my head. Shit, shit, shit!

Giovanni di Laurentis would never have gotten hurt like this, over something so stupid like my foot rolling over the ball and falling awkwardly enough that I think I ripped an important muscle group in my leg.

Through a haze of tears, snot, and blubbering, I see my dream dissipate into smoke by looking at my coach’s eyes, his face grim and pale like he’s gotten the worst kind of news.

I was supposed to debut in next week’s first official game of the season, I was supposed to be on the field for the first time and I was supposed to score a goal as a striker.

All I’m going to be doing is warming the bench.

I might as well call it quits right here.

All the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men couldn’t put Madelyn Chase back together again.

No one’s going to be seeing my name in lights on the big screen over the field after I score. Not for the next little while anyway.

My heart breaks a little.

TWO DAYS AFTER SURGERY and I’ve been instructed to not move my leg at all. That means no training whatsoever. Zero training. An undetermined amount of training that I am not allowed to participate in.

I haven’t not trained in a single day in forever. I don’t even know what to do with myself.

What do normal people do when they’re not conditioning or weight training? What are normal people doing when they’re not practicing strategy on the field? Christ, what the hell do normal people do?

I know there’s Netflix and a bunch of other streaming services that I’m not subscribed to. That’s a thing where people binge hours and hours of shows in one go, but I never have the time for that. I’m so tired after a long day of training that I’m barely able to feed myself before cleaning up my tiny apartment, changing into pajamas (which are usually ratty sweats proclaiming one football club or another that I’ve fangirled over in the past), and heading to bed, phone in hand, barely able to make it past a single page in whatever kissing book I’m reading at the time.

Football is my job, and I work twelve to fifteen-hour days, turning my body into the best footballer it can be.

Until today, when I can’t.

So what the hell am I supposed to do with myself now?

I have this stupid fiberglass brace encasing my entire right leg, from hip down to ankle, and I’m supposed to be walking with crutches. I hate the crutches, but I don’t want to prolong my injury or my healing because I was afraid to look like a little wounded bird, but it is what it is.

Now I’m walking around the field with my crutches, keeping pressure off my injured knee and leg, to the men’s side of the training center where they do everything we do but manlier—or so I’ve heard. The Southgate FC won the league championship last year, and they’re still riding that high—again, so I’m told.

The two teams don’t really mix, since the women’s team doesn’t have as much clout, even though we’re gaining in popularity day by day. Soccer is soccer, no matter who’s playing.

I don’t really like the men’s team, since they think that winning the League Cup makes them hot shit, and they walk around like they’ve each permanently grafted a portion of the cup up their asses.

Assholes, every single one of them.

Which has no effect on how easy it is to watch them practice, though. Their team play, their speed, and general camaraderie has been a whole season in the making and makes my teeth ache with how much I want to be with my own teammates like that—friends, sometimes out of necessity, but a weird kind of family nevertheless.

I’m the weird Canadian outsider that upended her entire life after getting scouted from playing in the Women’s World Cup and one of my goals got Team Canada to defeat the defending champions, Team U.S.A.

But, like, was I supposed to say no when Coach Erik Hansen came to see me after we lost in the semi-finals? Before I knew it, we were in discussions to come to play for Southgate FC, in England, where football is everything.

Yeah, no, I wasn’t not going to come here, try my hand at playing professionally in one of the coolest countries (no, really, I haven’t seen the sun for days), making a living at doing something I love. How many people can say that?

It doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been a horrible wake-up call—lonely out of my mind, exhausted out of my body, and no matter how much I talk to my old roomies, Aria and Raleigh, we all have our own lives and it takes some real kind of coordination to get us all free at a time when we’re not busy, across three different time zones.

There are girls here from across Europe, not to mention some of the girls that came through the academy, the highest level of football for women with slim as hell chances to make it professionally, even if they’ve been at this training center longer than I have.

And now?

I’m still getting flak for being a pro footballer, because I apparently have a uterus and tits. I thought you only needed a quick pair of feet to score a goal. My tits have nothing to do with it.

A lot of the guys on the men’s team like to talk about how the talent pool is much smaller for the women, how we don’t train as hard or what-the-hell-ever.

We all know that if the guys were bleeding from an orifice, they’d be staying home right quick. Please.

So while they’re fun to watch, they’re complete dicks to try and have a conversation with, shoving their awesomeness up my nose if I get within a four-foot radius, because that’s who they are. Footballers are akin to celebrities in this part of the world, and I always wanted to be a part of this world, so I have to take it.

And now I’m here, on the sidelines, walking slowly along, aided by my crutches and my attitude the size of Mars to watch some sort of soccer where my teammates wave goodbye to me from the opposite field, done for the day, like we’re long-lost friends.

I want so badly to get on the field, to show them what I can really do when I’m not fighting a mental battle with myself; I want to show them that I can be the best striker in the league if given the chance.

But I’ve got about six to eight weeks to kill, and killing time is always something I’ve been bad at.

The men’s team is currently drilling with a simple game of monkey-in-the-middle, one guy in the middle of a circle, while the ring of guys surrounding him pass the ball to each other in simple and complicated ways to stop the monkey in the middle getting the ball. A simple drill, but one you’ll always find in a game. I want to be part of that ring so bad my teeth ache.

Hell, I’d settle for being in the middle, swinging my crutches like they’re an extra pair of legs.

And then I notice another guy standing on the sidelines, by himself, practicing high knees and kicking out at the air in controlled movements like he’s stretching out his groin and inner thigh muscles, breath puffing out in the cool air because it’s raining ninety percent of the time here, and damp, too. And they say Canada’s weather sucks.

I don’t know why he catches my attention, maybe because we’re in the same injured-footballer boat, and usually that’s a good thing. But I have to remind myself that he plays for the men’s team and therefore thinks I am a weaker player by the fact that I’ve got a pair of tits and a vagina.

I’m about to call out a hello since he’s seen me, looked me practically dead in the eyes, even at this distance, and I’m getting ready to lift up a crutch in my odd version of a hello, when he gets called back on the field when his name is called, and then I realize who it is.

Jesse Windmeier. Jesse freaking Windmeier. The phenom who’s a couple of years older than me, breaking hearts and signing big, hefty contracts to destroy the entire football universe. The phenom footballer that everyone’s losing their minds over.

He’s hurt, too? When did that happen? When did he get signed to Southgate?

Right, like you have time to read all the gossip all the time.

God, to play with a guy like him, one-on-one, that would be the best way to get better once my leg’s fully healed. The only way you can get better is to play with somebody who’s better than you, learn all their tricks.

I can picture it in my head, pulling dekes left and right, getting around Jesse Windmeier and scoring on him, impressing him with my incredible footwork. Now that would be an awesome story.

Now I’ve gotta watch him, see if he’s anything at all like Giovanni di Laurentis.

And he is. Jesse’s even better.

Shit, now I’ve got a crush on him, too.

To all the players I’ve loved before... I’m sorry?

TWO

August

Jesse Windmeier is pulling his kicks and basically doing the athletic equivalent of studying just hard enough to pass the exam by the skin of his teeth. But man, the guy can play. Even though he’s not going full throttle, drilling just hard enough to be showing off, I feel my jaw unhinge as I watch him dance around his teammates, the ball practically grafted to his feet.

No one can get the ball off him, or maybe they’re not really trying to, but there’s a part of me that can practically see the golden aura surrounding him now that I’ve fallen into fangirl-like with this footballer.

I’m sitting on the bench now, leg stretched out to accommodate the brace that’s helping the stability of my knee, aching to play, when a crazy, sheer dumb idea sparks in my brain, and because I am who I am, I know I’m going to follow through with it.

I’m thinking about asking him to help me train, to help me get back on my feet when the ball comes sailing towards me like a small torpedo, hard enough that if my face stayed at the current height, my nose would have been crushed and maybe even pushed up into my brain and my dreams of having my name in lights scoring goals for Southgate FC would be over before it even really started.

Instead, I hit the deck, tumbling back on my ass, half-forgetting I’m not supposed to make any sudden movements with my bad leg, and twinging something in the meat of my strained upper thigh for my trouble.

Oi! Pass us the ball!

I look up, back to the field, only to find the Wind (yeah, actually they call him that) beckoning for me to kick him back the ball from my current position on the ground, the damp turf soaking its way through my shorts and underwear, making my ass damp like I’m a toddler still in a diaper.

I guess he missed the fallen crutches that I flailed so beautifully as I went down like the Titanic, and he definitely missed the giant brace encasing my right leg.

I narrow my eyes at him as he walks towards me, practically glowing in the bright, bright lights, looking like a dream, but gesturing to the ball in annoyance, once again, not noticing that my ass is on the ground and I’m surrounded by my crutches.

So, Jesse Windmeier is an asshole. Duly noted. Most professional athletes are. Like they make themselves forget that there’s a serious countdown on their careers, no matter what sport they play. Injury is just the first strike.

Still, I’m a little aghast at having him speak to me, like the very words he bestows upon me will grace me with one-hundredth of his talent and I’ll magically be recuperated and kicking ass in time for the season opener next week.

Yeah, right. What dream world am I living in? The very kind that got me here in the first place, eh?

Yeah, I’ll just pass it to you with my bum leg! I call out, waving around my shiny crutch from the ground, hoping the light catches on it enough to make him feel like shit. Footballers, even though I’m making sweeping generalizations here, are assholes, and Jesse Windmeier might be the very best one. What a dick, I mutter to myself, trying to figure out the best way to get vertical without putting too much strain on my bad leg.

I end up having to roll onto my left side and push myself up enough that I can get my left leg underneath me and get me upright while hopping around on that foot and looking down at how very far away my discarded crutches are. Yeah, standing up was a bad idea.

I somehow participated in a chain of events that’s currently left me with a damp ass, a throbbing leg that I’m not supposed to even think about, and an asshole footballer yelling at me to kick the ball back to him. Right.

Well, it’s my fault for being stubborn, and there’s always a consequence to me being stubborn. My ass being damp, for one. For two, I think I screwed my recovery over by ducking and flailing down like a flopping, dying fish instead