This is a thoroughly excellent psychoanalytic (and Lacanian) journey through the world of sport - and of being a sports fan! - which walks the reader through the distinctive forms of fantasy, lack and libidinal intensity that inevitably come with this terrain. The book works both as an introduction to Lacanian psychoanalysis - whose pertinence to the politics and mass identifications of sport on the global stage is made abundantly apparent - and a guide to the Lacanians who didn't realize that sport is a superb way of dramatizing the most crucial elements of psychoanalysis.

Derek Hook, Author of Six Moments in Lacan

Armed with the sharpest theoretical tools that psychoanalysis has to offer, Jack Black provides an excellent insight into the puzzle that the passion for sports presents for many of us: Why is this passion, often by the very same people, seen as a ridiculous weakness for something meaningless, whilst, at the same time, it is the central source of meaning in their lives - the one thing "for which they bear to live or dare to die"?

Robert Pfaller, Author of On the Pleasure Principle in Culture: Illusions without Owners and Interpassivity: The Aesthetics of Delegated Enjoyment