Why don't I like football? Maybe it's because I was a timid child and I was made to play it against my will. Memories of cold, dark autumn afternoons in the 1980s, standing in the corner of a sports field hoping nobody would kick the ball anywhere near me, die hard.

At school, it was immediately clear that I wasn't prepared to risk the slightest graze, trip or knee-muddying, let alone an elbow in the stomach or a kick to the shins, in order to obtain the ball or to prevent my arbitrarily appointed opponents from doing precisely what they wanted with it.

I was once briefly put in goal, which was even worse. "You mean to say that, if somebody kicks the ball hard, I'm supposed to get in the way of it?" I felt like asking. "Why on Earth would I want to do that?" I swear it would have taken a modern Premier League-level salary to motivate me to do so. My only successes as goalie came because I wasn't particularly skilled at getting out of the way. I was like a third post, oscillating wildly between the fixed two, and occasionally ricocheting a shot away despite my best efforts.

As I grew older, I found sports I was willing to play - games like tennis, table tennis and squash, where I was confident enough that I wouldn't get hurt to be able to make an effort. But the excluding feeling of "not being sporty" as I huddled around a muddy goalmouth with two or three other swots - I picture us looking a bit like a frightened platoon of Roman soldiers from an Asterix book - comes back to me whenever football is on TV. Incidentally, I can't imagine how much I'd hate watching rugby if anyone had made me play that. As it is, they didn't and I consequently enjoy it - but very much in the way one of that ragged platoon might, on his day off, enjoy watching a Christian being eaten in the Colosseum: it's a great spectacle but it's not going to make him find a friend in Jesus.

So, for me and my fellow football-hating former shivering weeds, this should be the best time of year. It's bang in the middle of the tiny gap which a bullying pro-football world permits between seasons - a gap made even shorter by Euro 2008, which we shouldn't have had to watch anyway because no British teams were playing. July should provide some respite - even if it's just a brief pause in the shelling while the enemy bring up more ammunition. "Why don't you like football?" the world has been screaming for the last 10 months. Surely sometime it has briefly to draw breath?

But no. Despite the fact that no matches are being played, football still dominates the press. And what are they talking about? Transfers. Essentially, "Human Resources". So-and-so is reported to be meeting what's-his-name about a new job. AN Other is in talks with thingummy about a move down south. I mean, what's next? Reports on clubs' heating bills? In-depth analysis of a damp problem in one of the stands at Anfield? Even for football-lovers, those who don't find the game dull and alienating, this transfer guff must still be pretty boring. So why is it so avidly read?

Are other sports so hated and inadequate that their actual matches are considered less interesting than football's behind-the-scenes admin? Is football really such a "beautiful game", such an all-consuming passion for everyone except me and a tiny number of other freaks, that the majority cannot bear to be parted from thoughts of it even for a few weeks? If everyone loves it so much, am I being cruel for disparaging it at all, and not accepting its media domination as rightful? If so many people genuinely cannot let a day go by without immersing themselves in news of it, then perhaps I should be quiet. Maybe when there's such a consensus about something it means that, if I disagree, there's something wrong with me.

Because I just can't see the appeal. Football seems maddeningly dull to me. There are an average, I believe, of just over two goals per Premier League match. That's about one event every 40 minutes. And people say that cricket's slow! Even in the dullest Test match there are the equivalent of six shots at goal every over. Now I know there's more to it than that - there must be - but I have watched far more football than any other sport I can't stand, purely because it's so inescapable, and to me it still looks like it always has: they randomly kick it around and, very occasionally, with little or no warning, a goal happens.

Why am I so blind? Is everyone else really as keen as they claim? If there aren't millions whose football enthusiasm is a conformist affectation then I am indeed not completely human. Please tell me it isn't so. Don't get me wrong, I don't think football is evil or should be banned. I just want to be reassured that disliking it isn't as perverted as disliking sunshine or laughter, or wanting to keep spiders for pets.

david.mitchell@theguardian.com