This Is Deep Play

Building on Roland Barthes' work on plaisir and jouissance we introduce the terms and place them in the recognisably muddy grounding of association football. Featuring the importance of cheating to the sport, Luis Suarez winning the Jouissance World Cup, meta-game thinking and video game tickling, Darlington FC's world leading absurdist drama productions, the moribundly simplistic pleasure of Manchester United title triumphs, the shift from mob football to public school football, Beethoven wallpaper and a possible RSPCA investigation into animal cruelty.