“I WAS thinking the worst about what was going to be said the next day, all the negative things that every player feels in those situations … embarrassment. That’s what you fear in those moments.” 

For 20 minutes during a World Cup semi-final 30 years ago, Paul Parker carried the weight of a nation on his shoulders. A television audience of 25.2 million in the United Kingdom had seen the right-back racing out to block Andreas Brehme’s free-kick only to deflect the ball up into a fatal parabola over Peter Shilton.

“That was my job, to charge the ball down. My starting position was such that I could get to the ball as quickly as possible while making sure Peter Shilton could see the ball. The problem was my deflection affected the flight of the ball. It made a difference to Peter because prior to that, he had taken maybe half a step forward, then you’re asking him to take that step back and spring as well, up to get that ball. That’s why we ended up one-nil down.”

Tonight on BBC One, Parker will feature in “Return to Turin,” Phil King’s 2018 documentary in which members of the 1990 World Cup squad revisit the scene of England’s dramatic 1990 World Cup semi-final with West Germany. 

The Stadio delle Alpi may have been demolished, replaced by the new Juventus Stadium in 2011, but for Parker the memories of monkey chanting from German fans, audible from the first pass he received from Paul Gascoigne in the opening seconds, remain. 

“I was definitely aware of it. We didn’t really have the same amount of fans as they had. Things were heard, but at the end of the day that never bothered me, I got on with it. I saw it more as a disadvantage for them. It had cost them money to travel all that way to watch their team play against a side with black players.”

Before 1990, no black man had started for England in a World Cup finals match but the three black footballers in Bobby Robson’s Italia ‘90 squad were all to play pivotal roles in their campaign. 

While Des Walker and John Barnes were established members of Robson’s first team, Parker travelled as Gary Stevens’ understudy at right back. 

“I wasn’t anywhere near thinking I was playing,” he admits. 

A change in formation to a sweeper system brought about a starting role for the Queen Park Rangers defender, equally adept at attacking and covering his centre backs. 

Such versatility was required after Mark Wright gashed his forehead late in the quarter-final against Cameroon. With Wright forced to play out on the right wing, Parker covered in the middle to snuff out the threat of danger-man Roger Milla. 

Remarkably, the semi-final was only his 10th appearance for England but suffering from racist abuse while representing his country was not a new experience for Parker. 

A year earlier in Reykjavik, he had received similar taunts from England fans attending a B international. When he admitted last year that his parents never watched him play in a professional game, it was because he feared how they might react if they heard the chanting he had to endure. 

“There was never going to be anywhere I could go with it, to take it anywhere for it to cease. I didn’t have anybody to go to that was actually going to make a difference to me. I bounced off the back off it, I wanted more than anything to affect them more. It gave me a rush to play even better to be perfectly honest. I was never going to allow it to take away the opportunities that I had.”

Parker shrugged off the abuse and helped fashion England’s generation-defining equalising goal. This time luck was on his side, as his cross deflected off German captain Lothar Matthaeus to create havoc in the opposition penalty area which was capitalised on by Gary Lineker. 

“It was just a ball into an area really,” he says. “Everything was in front of me. Gary was just in a bit of space and it got missed by a German defender, he got the flight wrong and missed it and that’s how it managed to get through to Gary and he got that touch from his right thigh onto his left foot and then we’re back in the game.”

While the rest of the team and the television cameras raced to catch Lineker’s celebrations, England’s player of the tournament, Gascoigne, ran pointing towards the man who created the goal. 

Parker recalls that “he maybe had an idea of how I was feeling. It was just relief all round because if we’d have gone out, losing 1-0 with the way we played … we would never have deserved that.”

At the end of extra-time, with Gascoigne in floods of tears after receiving the yellow card which meant he would have been suspended from the World Cup Final, Parker was there for Gascoigne, the closest player to him as their manager consoled him. 

“Bobby Robson was just telling Gazza how well he’d been doing and just to carry on and enjoy it. To remember he was out there with another 10 people, to take out everything out on his opponents and not to implode.”

With Gascoigne, one of the designated five penalty-takers, in no state of mind to take one, did Parker ever volunteer to step forward? “I think I’d lined myself for one after Shilts,” he jokes. “It’s something that I certainly wasn’t rushing to do. It takes someone brave and if they miss it, they are still that brave person, regardless of whether they score or not.”

Three days later, Parker played in the Third Place Play-Off against Italy after which both teams received medals. Signed by Alex Ferguson in 1991, he would go on to win every domestic trophy in his first three seasons at Manchester United but still cherishes his solid bronze World Cup medal. “It’s one of those ones I look at, knowing there’s only so many of them. It was just great to have something to come back with. It could never be taken away.”

It would be another three years before the anti-racism charity, Kick It Out, would be launched in England. 

Following the racist abuse directed at England players during their Euro 2020 qualifier in Bulgaria, the players were united in their stance, black and white players together. 

So looking back does Parker wish he had that support from his teammates in 1990? “It’s a lot easier for them now than it was for players in yesteryear,” he explains. “Nobody’s going to condemn and people are going to go with them. We have to say players aren’t going to say no when they are asked to do things. It’s organised, they’re following a protocol to be honest.

“I’m sure there were a lot of players then who knew what I was going through. They knew and I knew that, even if they wanted to, they couldn’t have stood up for me, there was nowhere to go. I’m sure there were journalists who knew what was going on. 

“Journalists were never going to be able to write about the story in the fashion they wanted. Was the story ever going to be allowed to come out because I presume that their editors wouldn’t have allowed it?” 

Parker is shocked to discover the sports editor of the Morning Star is black. “If there was a black editor when I was 15 and 16, when I was getting abused he would have been there, he would have been in control of headlines.”

Now 56, Parker is a black man in the media. Having returned to England in 2017 after several years working as a co-commentator in Singapore, he feels there are now more opportunities for black people in the media than when he left. 

“Do I think the colour of my skin has affected me? Course I do, I live in England, of course it happens. Does it make me not sleep at night? No. I know when I go out there now, I see more black faces in the media than I saw before. The only other black journalist I saw on a regular basis was Darren Lewis. Things are different now. That’s a step forward.

“Have things moved forward from 10 years ago? Yes they have. Were there many black footballers around outside of London when I was playing? No, you didn’t see many. 

“Are there more black players than when I was playing? Top teams in Europe are not successful without having black players in their sides now. I just believe things take their time. It is getting better over the years because not as many kids are being born with a racist attitude because of their parents. It is getting better, without a doubt.”