“I’d put the headphones on and listen to heavy metal, and then I'd want to break down the door to get out on the pitch and go kill someone”: Former England legend Terry Butcher is a huge Iron Maiden fan and the original heavy metal footballer

A composite photograph of a bloodstained Terry Butcher in 1989 and Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris performing onstage in the 1980s.

For a man who was one of the most fearsome footballers of his generation, Terry Butcher cringes at the thought of looking back at his career in the game. “I get embarrassed by it,” says the defender who won the UEFA Cup with Ipswich Town and three Scottish titles with Rangers, and captained the England national team. “I don’t like seeing myself or hearing myself talk.”

He’s made an exception for Butcher: Invisible Wounds, a new hour-long documentary currently streaming on ITVX in the UK. It’s a portrait of a sporting warrior – a man who put the fear of god into opponents, was once reprimanded for kicking a referee’s dressing room door off its hinges in anger after an especially fiery game, and, famously, played virtually an entire match against Sweden in 1989 while bleeding profusely from a head wound, resulting in one of the most iconic images in football history.