‘We lost in a semi-final but it’s not the end of the world’
After a difficult year in which he lost his son Christopher, the former England centrehalf tells Jim White about a happier time when Bobby Robson’s side thrilled a nation
Terry Butcher knows precisely when it was that he last talked to someone about England’s semi-final defeat in the 1990 World Cup. “Forty-three minutes ago,” he says, his dry wit crackling down the telephone line from his home in Suffolk.
“Literally there has not been a day since when someone hasn’t talked to me about it. It’s been 28 years for goodness sake. The sad thing is, because no other England team has come close to repeating what we did, we’ve been held up as heroes. And never mind win it, we didn’t even get to the final.”
Butcher is speaking before he heads off to Russia to work for BBC Radio Five Live. It will be his seventh World Cup as a player or pundit. But this one, he acknowledges, is different. The others have been undertaken against a background of personal optimism and excitement. His trip to Russia, however, comes at the end of the most traumatic seven months imaginable for England’s erstwhile four-square centre-back.
In October 2017, his son Christopher, a former captain in the Royal Artillery, was found dead at the Butchers’ family home. He was aged just 35. The inquest last month suggested his death was due to issues brought on by post traumatic stress disorder, a tragic legacy of active service in Afghanistan. “It’s been hard, very tough,” Butcher says of the time since the death of the son in whom he showed such enormous paternal pride. “We lost a World Cup semi-final in 1990 and it’s not the end of the world. But losing a son really does feel like the end of the world.”
He is going to Russia in an attempt, he says, to busy himself in work, to be absorbed once again in the greatest tournament in world sport. Or as he puts it, to get back on his bike.
And as he heads eastwards he accepts it is inevitable that his time as a central cog of the last England team to make a proper mark on the World Cup will be occupying the collective memory. Not that he recalls many being particularly upbeat about Bobby Robson’s side’s chances as they headed off to Italy back then.
“It was soon after Hillsborough, English football was at an all-time low,” he says. “Let’s just say the squad morale wasn’t brimming with confidence.” And what little confidence they had was not enhanced after the first group stage game – a 1-1 draw against Ireland. During a bruising encounter the team’s captain and talisman, Bryan Robson, sustained yet another injury which would preclude him from taking any further part in the competition.
“Bryan was the best outfield player I ever played with, he was so committed,” says Butcher. “But we were well used to him getting injured. Without him, Bobby had to change everything around. We brought in a completely radical new system. And it worked.”
Persuaded by a cabal of senior players led by his captain, the manager switched to the same 3-5-2 formation Gareth Southgate will employ in Russia.
“The first time we tried it in training we were hopeless, we got beaten by the reserves 1-0,” Butcher recalls. “But then against Holland we were forced out of our comfort zone and we had to go for it. We made it work.”
In the new system, Paul Gascoigne found the space in midfield to express himself, putting in a superb performance against the Dutch. And it was Gazza, Butcher says, who made the difference. Not least in the down time between matches, when boredom can corrode all sense of purpose. “He was an absolute pain in the neck,” he says of Gascoigne. “He got up to all kinds of tricks. He was funny for a bit – about five minutes – then, boy, was he annoying. But it really helped the morale: you were constantly worrying what he was going to do next, so you were never bored. After all, without him, our entertainment would have been Monopoly, Ceefax and Peter Beardsley.”
After beating Egypt to qualify for the knockout stages, then easing past Belgium with a last-minute goal from the newly promoted David Platt, England found themselves up
‘Gazza was funny for a bit – about five minutes – then, boy, was he annoying. But it really helped the morale’
against Cameroon in the quarterfinal. “Everyone was telling us it would be an easy game. It was the complete opposite. They were immense. So powerful and strong. Truth was, we were going out but for the two penalties from Gary [Lineker].”
But with the semi-final reached for the first time in 24 years a ripple of expectation began to take hold in the squad. From home came news of a country in thrall to their exploits, with record television audiences tuning in to watch the compelling combination of Des Lynam, Nessun Dorma and Gazza.
“We started to think maybe the luck was with us,” Butcher recalls.
“And we knew, whoever won between us and Germany in the semi would win the World Cup.”
In the days leading up to the game in Turin, he remembers everyone in the squad being extraordinarily relaxed. Gascoigne was keeping up morale with his relentless idiocy, while the two Robsons – Bobby and Bryan – were brilliant man-managers, making every squad member, even those destined for the bench, feel a part of the wider enterprise.
“It was a privilege to play with those players,” Butcher says of his team-mates. “We were a band of brothers, that’s what it felt like. Morale was absolutely sky high. Bobby made us so happy. But then a team that wins always has the best spirit.”
As the game kicked off, it was clear England did not feel remotely intimidated. With Gascoigne, Platt and Chris Waddle controlling the midfield, Lineker and Beardsley a constant threat up front, and Butcher, Des Walker and Mark Wright comfortable in their new defensive shape, they played better than they had all tournament. Even going into extra time, Butcher was convinced they would win.
“We didn’t get what we deserved,” he says. “Maybe in the end it was their mentality that beat us.” That and what was to become a
familiar failing: the penalty shoot-out. “I thought Stuart [Pearce] and Chris [Waddle] would score,” he says of the penalties. “Never for a moment doubted it.”
But they did not and England were out. Butcher says in the immediate aftermath, he did not fully appreciate the meaning of the defeat, how narrow the margins had been between expulsion and immortality.
“We weren’t that far, we were pretty, pretty close to making the final,” he says. “But it didn’t really strike me what we’d missed out on until we went to the third/fourth place match in Bari. We had to play in a game that no one in their right mind wants to play in, a complete nonsense of a game. It was so sad heading down there for that, after all we had put in.”
As he recalls the last moments of the competition, the party atmosphere around the third-place match, the Mexican wave he indulged in while sitting on the bench, another memory strikes him: Christopher had flown out to watch the semi-final with his mother, Butcher’s wife Rita and had then stayed on for the play-off game. “He was there in Turin, he was eight years old. I remember seeing him in the crowd afterwards, crying his eyes out.”
Christopher was still with him when the squad returned home to Luton Airport, where they were greeted by an extraordinary outburst of national excitement, with thousands lining the streets.
“He went on the open top bus tour with us, he was with Chris Woods’s son Mark, they were good mates those two. And I remember for some reason people in the crowd kept on passing Big Macs up to us. The lads handed them to the two boys. He had about half a dozen of them. That was the thing he remembered most about it all afterwards, the Big Macs.” And Butcher chuckles for a moment as he is transported back to a time when optimism was everywhere, a time before misery struck.