butakera de clausura

England's repeated failure in penalty shoot-outs is not down to bad fortune, as the English media, with its empiricist presuppositions, insists. To lose once might be an accident, but to lose five times demands a psychoanalytic explanation. Some clues as to the nature of the libidinal disorder which afflicts the England side were provided when Rooney was sent off yesterday. From being disjointed and tentative, England suddenly looked purposive and effective. That was because Rooney's dismissal gave England the opportunity to achieve what it is most comfortable and familiar with, a heroic defeat. England players are so accustomed to failure that they would find success traumatic and unimaginable, so it is as if, time after time, the team contrives to lose one of its key players - Rooney yesterday, Beckham in 1998 - in order to set up the conditions for the desired 'heroic defeat'.

England, however, never seem able to escape these fatalistic nets. That is partly because Defeat has been transcendentalized in English culture, transformed into a basic presupposition of experience. The problem is that a failure of belief - 'We cannot win' - has been transformed into a desire for failure - 'it is better not to win'. This kind of libidinal switch was what Nietzsche famously described in his analysis of slave morality. Unable to act, the slave eventually comes to think that it is better not to act, that those who are successful are Evil oppressors, that it is the weak and the destroyed who are the Chosen.

Argentina Topo Gigio's in the World Cup

⭐Lionel Messi (2022)

⭐Enzo Fernandez (2026)

"Keep talking, I'm listening now."

Originally created by Argentine legend Juan Román Riquelme in 2001, based on the famous 1960s Italian puppet, Topo Gigio. A sweet, big-eared mouse whose show was a massive hit among Argentine children.