I don't know whether to blog about football. I mean, it's the World Cup, and 
I've written a novel based on a utopian football club, so it seems as if I
should, but if you're reading this blog, you're probably a book-buyer, and a
huge number of my more book-buying friends say they wouldn't have picked up 
my book because of the football.

They claim to have liked the book (they would, of course) and to be shocked
that the football didn't get in the way of their enjoyment. But since the
book is really about growing up through your twenties and thirties in London 
as part of a group of friends, about falling in and out of love, coming to 
terms with crises and compromises and the fact that the world isn't always
what you wished it would be, and seeing as that's what my friends have been
doing for the last fifteen years, I'm not surprised they identified with it.

But I know nothing about football, they say. Or, more often, I hate 
football. To which I say: if someone told you a novel was about eighteenth 
century Japan, you wouldn't dismiss it simply because you don't know 
anything about eighteenth century Japan. I really do see why people hate 
having the game forced incessantly down their throats, but stories 
are about people, not settings. The Kilburn Social Club isn't a paean to
football or a football lesson - football is just a good vehicle for a story
which unfolds over a number of years, and I really wanted time to be a
factor. There's the slow, remorseless cycle of money and business; the
predictable rhythm of the seasons; the dramatic tension of tiny moments; and
there is the accelerated and peculiarly visceral way sportsmen face getting
old much younger than almost anyone else.

So, I hope football haters will like the book, and know many have, and
that's why I didn't know whether to blog about football. But since it's the 
world cup, let me tell you a thing about penalties that not enough people
know: England are bad at them because of a peculiarly macho part of our
football culture.

If someone is prepared to take a penalty, the commentator invariably says,
At least he didn't hide, at least he stood up to be counted. The result is 
that when it's time for penalties, self-consciously brave and manly players
like Jamie Carragher and David Batty, who are manifestly inept
penalty-takers put themselves forward, because they're terrified that people
will otherwise think they were hiding. They shoot, they miss, England lose.
The team should practice penalties, and the best penalty takers should take
them.

Another thing: are other countries full of people flying their national
flags with the country's name written on the flag? Maybe they are, but it
seems odd.