ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to document the thesis that machos in Argentina are attracted to the soccer field in order to find a collective therapeutic outlet for their taboo thoughts regarding the fear of being debased into a passive, emasculated role. If one were to make a list of major social events in which millions of men, in most corners of this earth, invest curiously large amounts of affective energy, the soccer spectacle would most likely occupy a comfortable place among the 10 top such events. Scholarly works on the psychosocial nature of the soccer spectacle have for the most part been conducted by either European or Latin American researchers. In Argentina at least, the folk themselves in their projective symbolic systems associate the goals with their masculinity, more specifically their culos. In Argentina, gallina is not used to refer to women, but very specifically to cowards, who in theory stand in binary opposition to the machos.
