Terry Butcher: The grief when my son passed away was all-encompassing

My Sporting Life is The i Paper’s look behind the curtain at what drives sports stars to greatness. Terry Butcher never felt like he deserved to play for England. Now he has revealed just how important Sir Bobby Robson was for his career, the unexpected place his famous blood-stained England shirt is displayed and how he’s paying tribute to his late son Chris. I had imposter syndrome throughout my entire England career Playing and captaining England was the biggest honour of my football career but I never thought I deserved to be there. I had imposter syndrome. I felt I had to prove myself every time I went out for England because there were a lot of people who didn’t want me to be there. I was booed once at Wembley. I think it was Arsenal fans who wanted Tony Adams in the side, so I got booed and that stimulated me to prove them wrong. Being with England was two or three levels up from club football at the time. Some of the training sessions we used to have were scary because we had John Barnes, Chrissy Waddle, Gazza. It was harder than the games you were picked for. I will never forgive Diego Maradona for 1986 I’m still as angry with Diego Maradona for the ‘Hand of God’ goal. Time hasn’t healed it and there’s still a huge amount of regret and disappointment about what he did. People remind me about the handball all the time but I’m more disappointed with the second goal. He didn’t beat me once, he beat me twice and I nearly got to him. I was probably the width of a bootlace away from getting the ball and blocking him and I would have loved to have done that.Maradona was the best player I ever played against, small but very strong and with a low centre of gravity. He had an incredible football brain and you couldn’t get near him. Perhaps I should have just smashed him and taken a red card. Diego Maradona’s iconic Hand of God goal for Argentina against England in 1986 (Photo: Getty) We lost the game and I had to go into a room with Maradona for a drugs test afterwars. He couldn’t speak English very well, I couldn’t speak Spanish so I gestured at him, tapping my head and then tapping my hand as if to say, ‘Which was it?’ He tapped his head so there’s proof that he was a little liar as well. He was probably looking after his health because he knew I was slightly bigger than him. It was horrible to be in there with him and they had beers as well. We didn’t because our World Cup was over. My blood-stained England shirt is in the Scottish Football Museum I knew the famous cut was bad as soon as it happened. I reached up and the whole of my hand was red. My first fear was I was going to be substituted and I wasn’t having that. So I got it bandaged and at half-time the doctor put a few stitches in but there was no flesh there so we had to wait for the anaesthetic to kick in and for him to get his needle out. All of a sudden the half-time bell went and I only had seven stitches. He didn’t have time to do the top two which is why it kept bleeding. I wanted to show leadership. I had an inner voice telling me, ‘Pull your finger out and get on with it’. I didn’t know it was going to be an iconic moment. I made the mad eyes to the press at the end because I saw the photographers gathered around me. I was the picture they wanted and I thought ‘I’ll give it to them and do something stupid’ and it went round the world. A bloodied Terry Butcher pictured after England’s goalless draw with Sweden in 1989 (Photo: Getty) I must have had a concussion or something because I bought the England press pack a drink at the bar in the airport on the way home. It was two shirts I wore that night. The first one I auctioned for charity and it made a lot of money and the second one is on loan at Hampden at the Scottish Football Museum. I spent so much time in Scotland as a player and manager that they asked me, ‘Would you loan it to us?’ It’s a nice article for them to have in the museum. It’s all washed and in there. It’s left for my boys for later in life. Sir Bobby Robson was the biggest influence on my career He meant everything to me. I was with him for 14 years with Ipswich and England. He gave me my first professional contract with Ipswich and he was a father figure to me. He was one of those people who you wanted to prove yourself to. He’d say to me ‘The thing about you Butcher, is when I select you, you never let me down’. If someone says that, you’re going to go through brick walls for them, but he was hard as well. He saw things in me, weaknesses, and he’d tell me vociferously, with a few swear words in there and that Geordie grit. I have helped write a book about his time with England, Almost Immortal, and it has been a brilliant experience reliving those days. Sir Bobby Robson passed away in 2009 (Photo: Getty) I couldn’t talk about my son’s death until last year My son Christopher died in 2017. He had PTSD after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and I couldn’t talk about it until last year when I did a documentary about him because the grief was too much. Christopher hadn’t been well for a long time. He was staying with us in 2016 and me and my wife became carers but we didn’t have a clue what to do. We’re just parents. We looked after him but it was very tough. It was tough on Christopher, he knew a lot was wrong but he couldn’t fix it and neither could we. The grief when he passed away was all encompassing, it was very, very tough. I couldn’t talk about it until really last year, when we did the documentary. I’m now a patron of a charity called “Combat2Coffee” which helps veterans and their families to have a brew, have a chat and perhaps speak to people who can help. I’m now a patron and I love it. I know Christopher would have loved it. We don’t want families to suffer and go through what we went through. Football was always my love but I want my legacy to be what I’m doing with Combat2Coffee and veterans. Read more Eddie Jones: England fans still thank me for what I did – it makes me emotional James Haskell: Having a daughter is an emotional hand grenade I think people are a bit disappointed when they meet me I think people expect me to be smashing doors and elbowing people when they meet me but I’m not like that. I used to get in the zone for my job. I was primed and ready to go, but off the pitch I’m just a gentle giant, I’m very humble and I just get on with it. I hope I don’t disappoint people by being the complete opposite to what I was on the pitch. There’s a saying isn’t there – ‘never meet your heroes’ – I hope it’s not like that. Terry Butcher’s new book ‘Almost Immortal – When Bobby Robson’s England gripped the Nation’ is out now, featuring interviews with Paul Gascoigne, Gary Lineker and other former England stars. You can buy it here www.almostimmortal.co.uk