"I’ll be in the stadium for the final and I’ll be fizzing and fidgeting," he wrote in a column published by The Athletic. "It might sound a bit morbid but I said to Will, my son, not too long ago, that I just want to be around when the Newcastle or England teams I so proudly represented win a f***ing trophy. Surely one isn’t too much to ask? It’s the only thing missing. Football means so much to us and I want to see the reaction. I want to see what it does to us, I want to sample it and savour it and swim in it and lose myself in it."