It seems to me that Newcastle are one of the last big English clubs which have still got a really romantic air around them. At one point he leaned over and shouted at the referee: 'Fuck off you bald-headed cunt!' Then he looked down and saw Nick, who's bald as well, and tapped him on the shoulder and said: 'Sorry, not you, obviously, Mr 'Ornby.'"I was delighted they chose Newcastle for the film. There was a guy behind us at the game shrieking obscenities at the referee and the players throughout the match. If I had a season ticket for Fulham or Charlton I'd be just as happy, though Highbury is probably my favourite ground Nick Hornby took me to my first match at Arsenal.

It was a real show of devotion, though unfortunately two weeks before I was meant to have lunch with Zola he was transferred to Cagliari."I've never felt any particular passionate affection for Chelsea over any other club. She wouldn't tell me what she paid, though that doesn't matter anyway because it went to charity. He is married to the British actress Emily Mortimer - daughter of Sir John "Rumpole of the Bailey" Mortimer - and during their regular spells in London he invariably takes the opportunity to attend matches.Indeed, when Nivola was in talks to appear in Goal! he had one particular contract demand: season tickets at London football clubs. "My wife was at a charity auction lunch one day and she bought me Chelsea season tickets plus lunch with Gianfranco Zola, who comes from the same province in Sardinia as my family," Nivola said "She got into a bidding war with some rabid Chelsea fan. Just as he has become valued as a player of British parts - his credits include roles in Love's Labour's Lost and Mansfield Park - so he was the obvious choice to feature in Goal!. The son of a football-loving Italian father, Nivola is both a regular player and a keen follower of the game. Or should that be 'rattled the post'?"The fact that Nivola knows the language of football is not down simply to good homework.

The man in the No 10 shirt was 32-year-old Alessandro Nivola, one of Hollywood's most promising young actors, who has spent the last three months in the guise of Gavin Harris, a jack-the-lad English footballer who is one of the film's central characters.Harris is a Newcastle colleague of Santiago Munez (played by Kuno Becker), a young Mexican from Los Angeles who in the film joins him on the playing staff at St James' Park and becomes a Geordie hero. Several members of the Newcastle squad, as well as David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane, Raul and Sven Goran Eriksson, have been playing themselves during filming on Tyneside and at Pinewood.The idea of an American actor playing an English footballer clearly amused the Newcastle squad when Nivola joined them for a training session. "There I was, a Yank with a fake tan and bleached blond hair, prancing around on the training pitch," Nivola recalled. "Steve Harper was in goal and when we lined up to do the shooting drills people were betting £10 that I would miss I nearly gambled away my entire fee for the film.