ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic listening is potentially something special, something other. Nevertheless there is something in Lacan’s assertion that there is no practice, activity–his word is “praxis”, call it what we will, that is more real in the sense of trying to touch the heart of experience. And football has that capacity: to touch our hearts. But neither psychoanalysis nor football is ever all there is, nor can they take the place of a whole host of other aspects of our lives. Lacan was always keen to emphasise something of the quality of the flow, the movement specific to unconscious process. He would use terms such as “cut” and “pulsate”. Lacan described the position of the analyst as “the one supposed to know”, the assumption of this potentiality for knowledge occasioning love. In football we all know that our team is “the one supposed to win”, and of course we all love our team. But it is a frustrated love.
