Well documented and well rehearsed, Tony Adams has been through this line of questioning for some time. Three decades, in fact. It was the summer of 1996 – a home European Championships – when the then England captain reached rock bottom. After an excruciating penalty shootout exit against Germany, the talismanic centre-back embarked on a ghastly 44-day bender, mixing brandy with Guinness to avoid consistent vomiting. By August, aged 29, his alcohol addiction had gone too far.
“I felt so lonely and so desperate,” Adams recalls, now 30 years sober. “I was blacking out and it got into my psyche. I had this mask on, so no one saw it, but underneath I was dying. Everything had stopped working: the football, the drink. I felt scared, in terror, and I just didn’t want to be here. I had a moment where I broke down and cried – and that was a moment of clarity.”
