Terry Butcher: ‘I’ve learned to live with the Hand of God goal better’

The former England centre-back answers your questions on Diego Maradona, Bobby Robson and on staying in strange places

“Have you made up all these on your own?” asks Terry Butcher, sitting in a London office in the week he is presented with his England legacy cap. It turns out dozens of Guardian readers want to pick the brains of a much-loved centre-back who was feted en route to a World Cup semi-final and tormented four years previously by the mercurial genius of Diego Maradona.

Did Maradona ever admit to the “Hand of God”? Butcher found himself in the post-match doping-control room alongside his nemesis at the Azteca in 1986. “I tapped my head, then my hand, and then he tapped his head,” Butcher says. “He didn’t admit to it because, if he had, I’d have been right across that room.”