The Long Game By Elena Aramas

A disgraced soccer exec reluctantly enlists the help of a retired soccer star in coaching a children s team in this small-town love story in the vein of  Ted Lasso  and  It Happened One Summer   from the  New York Times  bestselling author of  The Spanish Love Deception.

Adalyn Reyes has spent years perfecting her daily routine: wake up at dawn, drive to the Miami Flames FC offices, try her hardest to leave a mark, go home, and repeat.

But her routine is disrupted when a video of her in an altercation with the team s mascot goes viral. Rather than fire her, the team s owner who happens to be her father sends Adalyn to middle-of-nowhere North Carolina, where she s tasked with turning around the struggling local soccer team, the Green Warriors, as a way to redeem herself. Her plans crumble upon discovering that the players wear tutus to practice (impractical), keep pet goats (messy), and are terrified of Adalyn (counterproductive), and are nine-year-old kids.