Footballers take every game as it comes. Alcoholics take every day as it comes. Tony Adams does both. A year ago, the Arsenal captain stuck his hand in the air, not to scream for offside, but to ask quietly for his team-mates' attention before telling them that he was addicted to alcohol. It was a brave confession to make to a dressing-room governed by laddish rules where personal honesty takes a back-seat to banter.

It was a measure of the respect his team-mates feel for the man that they rallied behind him without hesitation. Not long afterwards, Adams made another courageous admission to the macho world of football: he revealed that instead of drinking, he was now intoxicated by English literature.

"It's great, I'm really enjoying it," he said of his part-time English GSCE course. "I'm opening my mind. I've read Romeo and Juliet, a Thomas Hardy novel and bit of Keats." He is also learning to play the piano.

Those who laughed missed the point. Sure, his unlikely conversion provided an easy-target and a stark contrast to an impulsive past highlighted by loutish incidents in a nightclub and pizza restaurant and a prison sentence for drink-driving.

But for the England captain, these changes mean much more. They are part of his way of wrestling free from the vice-like grip of what, with the zealousness of a convert, he now refers to as "this evil stuff". It is probably the hardest task of his life.

Basically the 31-year-old Adams is beginning a new life, with new rules, new perspectives and help from a counsellor. Not surprisingly, he is still feeling his way, wary of ridicule while trying to make this fresh reality as habitual as his old one.

The following exchange may offer some insight into the sensitive, honest, wary and reflective man that is now Tony Adams.

MT: If someone was to ask you for a thumbnail sketch of who Tony Adams is as a person, what would you say?

TA: "Tony Adams as a person? (pause) I don't think I've got the intellect to sum that up in a limited analysis. I'd be interested in what you think."

MT: "You seem a gentle, laidback and reflective person, which is unusual in a footballer."

TA: Well thank you. Yeah, I do reflect on a lot of things, I do tend to look at myself, which I think can only be a good thing. Reflecting on how I play the game has always helped me with what's happening in my career, so reflecting on my personal life has helped me with my personal life."

MT: Perhaps that is the only thing people should reflect on - themselves.

TA: "I agree. Improve oneself. That's all we can do really. To do one's best. That's it. (Pause) It's never easy when you say that."

MT: It's hard?

TA: "Well, there are softer options. I used to take the softer options. But I don't any more."

Adams now lives in the moment, a bold choice given that for many people it can be a frightening location. The move has not only changed his life, but the way he views the game.

"You get the realisation that you're not going to have it for ever and that one day, the legs will stop running," he says. "There is a certain fear attached to that yes, but you either respond by hanging up your boots or you go and relish every game, and that's what I'm doing. I'm trying to grasp the moment in games, and keep on playing and enjoying it as long as I can. It has been a rejuvenation for me."

And how much has your change of lifestyle been involved in that? "Very much so, obviously."

Recent months spent sidelined with an injury have also given him thinking time. But now he is fit again and, though still finding his best form, he will be central to England's plans of winning next Saturday's crucial encounter on the green, green grass of Rome.

Will Adams feel any pressure in such a game? "Just the normal anxieties of wanting to do well for my country."

If anyone can cope, it is Adams. His club manager Arsene Wenger says he has never met anyone as mentally tough as his captain.

"He and his determination are respected by everybody," says Wenger. "He is a big influence here, a good individual player, tactically strong and someone who reads the game well and quickly.

"Off the pitch, because he is very sensitive, he also feels what's happening in the dressing-room. He knows where the problems lie among the players and between them they all get solved. It doesn't even need the manager."

And the astute Wenger knows what role sobriety has played in the Adams metamorphosis. "He is at an important age when you start to think about your life and he has decided to combat his problems. It has given him more maturity."