IT was more than 20 years ago. You might like to think we would be over it by now. Moved on, found closure, as the psychobabblers among us like to say: but no. It is, in fact, a life sentence.

One glimpse of that thrust-out chin and that turkey-cock chest, and we are plunged straight back into the horror. We are once more sitting in front of the telly, howling with impotent rage as Diego Maradona robs us of the World Cup and rubs it in by claiming, if not actually to be God, then at the very least to have Him on his side. Terry Butcher, one of the hapless England side forced to share a field with Mr ‘Hand of God’ back in 1986 has more reason than most of us to bear a grudge against Maradona.

If there’s anything worse than a cheating footballer, it’s a cheating footballer who glories in his undeserved success, and compounds the crime by being more talented than anyone else, not only on the pitch, but arguably in the world.

Terry Butcher, now assistant manager of Scotland’s national team, comes face to face with his old nemesis again tonight, when Argentina take on Scotland in a ‘friendly’ at Glasgow.

He says he doesn’t want to speak to Maradona, let alone shake that infamous hand, even after all these years. It’s a stand that has provoked some commentators into suggesting Butcher should grow up and show himself to be a better man than that.

It’s often argued that allowing wounds to fester is bad for us. We should all learn to ‘let go’.

But I don’t know. There’s a lot to be said for nursing a grievance – not least because it feels so good to have your prejudices stroked when the object of your hatred misbehaves, yet again, just as you knew he or she would.

When the bloke in the Subaru Impreza undertakes you and cuts you up at the traffic lights, do you think, “Gosh, he must be in a hurry,” and let him roar off into the distance with every good wish for the future?

And when you pull up at the next set of traffic lights to find him just in front of you in the queue, do you worry about the lack of progress he has made and whether or not he will make his appointment on time?

Or do you smile the broad smile of someone who has seen someone fail to profit from rudeness: a rudeness that has reinforced all you’d ever thought about Impreza drivers? And when you next see an Impreza, do you think, “Oh look, there’s another of those unusual cars, and what a coincidence, this driver seems to be in a rush as well?”

I think not.

You could argue that nursing a grievance has its roots in evolution. The fittest got to survive at least partly through learning from experience.

When early man first got his hand stung in the bee’s nest, he may never have liked the insect again, but it certainly made him think up less hazardous ways in which to harvest the honey. When he did, it will have tasted all the sweeter because he was getting one back on the avian world.

If nursing a grievance is a useful evolutionary tool, could it not be argued that those who do it are, well, a little bit more evolved?

So who’s the better man now?