This essay explores an analogy: A well-played soccer game has much in common with a well-taught lesson or course. Aesthetic pedagogy, as conceived by Dewey, Gadamer, and contemporary theorists and practitioners, is set alongside the world's favorite sport, including events from the 2006 World Cup and the autobiography of Pele. The discussion moves among four focal concepts--play (including creativity), relationality (in particular, resistance), process or in-betweenness, and the experience of "flow," as researched and described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi--and interweaves soccer, aesethetic and pedagogical theory, and classroom research and narratives. The latter are drawn from the related fields of language education and English as a Second Language (ESL), chosen not only because it is the author's area of expertise but as a generally underrepresented domain of theorizing within aesthetic pedagogy. (Contains 54 notes.)