Troy Deeney would like you to know that he is a “nice guy”, despite his reputation as one of the most intimidating players in English football. Recently, the Watford striker earned a red card for apparently elbowing Arsenal midfielder Lucas Torreira in the face, accused Arsenal of lacking the “cojones” to beat his team and said that he would “kick the shit out of” Everton before a match against them. Yet despite all this, he is charming and polite over the course of the afternoon we spend together in central London, during which he mentions his likability no fewer than four times: “I’m really a nice guy, aren’t I? Not many people know that.”

Inside the six feet of solid, tattooed muscle, behind the weathered face and toothy grin, is a need to be seen and heard, and not just for the outlandish statements and pitchside antics. Deeney may be captain of Watford, a team he led to promotion to the Premier League in 2015 and now the FA Cup final this week, but at 30 he is middle-aged for a footballer. As he moves towards the twilight of his career, he is worrying about how he will be remembered.

Growing up in low-income housing in Birmingham, the eldest of five children, Deeney did not dream of making football a career. “It got in the way of chasing girls,” he says in his soft Brummie lilt. “My cousin Joe was just the coolest kid and I wanted to be like him. He had girls, could do whatever he wanted and he was a bricklayer, so I decided to do that.”

He certainly didn’t want to copy his father, who he says dealt drugs. “My dad was well known on the streets, shall we say, and he had a different lifestyle, which could spill into the home setting. Being exposed to that at a young age was difficult. When I was 10, my dad beat me and my mum up pretty badly. He was angry and we didn’t know why. It only happened once, but I remember being in year six at school and having social workers come to check up on me. It didn’t seem like a big deal then but it definitely shaped me to be more tough because I had to be the man of the house. I became more hostile and more confrontational – it’s what life has thrown at me.”

Deeney’s parents divorced soon after the attack but he maintained a relationship with his father. “He was my superhero; he would fix everything,” Deeney says. “When I talk about my home life, people think I must have lived in this drug-baron house but it was actually pretty normal. It was only when we’d go out as a family that I realised who and what he was. People had a fear of being around him.” Was Deeney ever afraid? “I was never afraid of him – I’ve never feared any one,” he says, then adds: “But there were times where I really didn’t want him to hit me again because there was nothing I could do to defend myself. I was only a kid.”

Deeney pours champagne over teammate Lloyd Doyley after Watford’s promotion, 2015. Photograph: Jed Leicester/BPI/REX/Shutterstock

Deeney’s mother, by contrast, was “an angel”, someone who “protects me to this day”. She still lives in Birmingham with his grandmother and he visits at least once a fortnight, happy to be a “mummy’s boy”.

Leaving school at 16, Deeney followed cousin Joe into bricklaying, although his footballing talents didn’t go unnoticed. He was scouted by the youth academy at Aston Villa but was dropped after failing to show up for the first three days of training. Why didn’t he turn up? “I was angry when I was younger; I was drinking a lot,” Deeney says. “That’s what everyone else did – it’s how we had fun as kids – but I realise now it was self-destructive.”

Despite the Aston Villa fiasco, Deeney signed for local non-league team Chelmsley Town, moving to Walsall in 2007 and Watford in 2010. There are reports of him playing while drunk early in his career. “In my worst periods, I’d be drinking every day, or at least four or five times a week,” he says.“I’d have 15 Jack Daniels – anything that tasted horrible. I just wanted to get to the state when I could black out because then I didn’t need to care. I could hide from all my fears, from confronting issues about myself I didn’t like.”

In 2012, after finishing his second season with Watford as their top goal-scorer, his star seemingly on the rise, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 months in prison for kicking a man’s head and breaking his jaw during a brawl. “My dad was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in February 2012, and finding that out really messed me up,” Deeney says. “I went out for a friend’s birthday not long after. I was angry and hurt and excessively drinking, and I was running around with people who weren’t friendly. I got into a fight, which never should have happened. I then got arrested and while the legal process was happening, I was losing my dad at the same time. My dad died in May, we buried him in June and it was three days after the funeral that I went to jail.”

Does grief excuse such a brutal assault? “That’s someone’s kid that I hurt,” Deeney says, “so it’s not for me to keep talking about. But it’s obviously something I never should have got into – I regret it massively.”

He looks me square in the eye and continues. “Within five months I went from feeling like I was king of the world, playing football, making money and having all my friends love me, to going straight to jail.”

It was a turning point. “Because of where I’m from and who my dad is, I had friends in jail and people who knew my dad, so I was protected,” he says. “But to get released on tag, I had to do an alcohol- and drug-awareness course and see a counsellor. I had to talk, and that made me feel all right. For once, I didn’t have to be the man any more, and from then on I decided I’d keep doing it.” He was released after serving two months of his sentence and went straight back to Watford, scoring the winner against Huddersfield only weeks after leaving prison.

He has been getting counselling for six years now. “Speaking to a psychologist has helped me massively. First, we dealt with grief and then anger and drinking. Now it’s all about: am I comfortable being me? My biggest thing is to try to understand how I can control the anger that comes from being Troy Deeney on the football pitch and not have that leak into my personal life. When I was younger, the split between the person I am on the pitch and in public was really hard. I had more vulnerabilities and insecurities to guard … It got too exhausting being the tough guy.”

Deeney celebrates after Watford defeat Wolves in the FA Cup semi-final last month. Photograph: Kieran McManus/BPI/REX/Shutterstock

He had two children with his ex-wife Stacey, 10-year-old Myles and four-year old Amelia. He has been in a relationship with the model Alisha Hosannah since last July. “It’s like we were made for each other – she is my best friend,” he grins.

But he is still haunted by the past. “You don’t ever get over grief,” he says. “I woke up just yesterday and wanted to call my dad and have a chat with him. I should have done more for him; I could have taken him away from his life and shown him there was more to the world.” Deeney’s father was only 47 when he died. “That plays on my mind, too. My dad was the strongest, fittest man I’ve ever met and if he died then, that only gives me, like, 15 years. If that’s the case, I need to do something substantial to leave my mark on the world, so when people talk about me, it’s not just: ‘Troy the footballer.’”

You could understand why he might want people to stop talking about him altogether. He has been targeted by racists throughout his career, and last month, after a FA Cup semi-final match against Wolves, used his Instagram account to tell “small-minded people” that there was “no room for racism”. “To me, this isn’t a game,” he wrote. “When you racially abuse my family or myself, I have to take measures to prevent young people seeing these comments and thinking that it’s acceptable.”

He explains: “I’ve been getting so much abuse on social media ever since my career started and I report it all the time, but all I get in response is statements like: ‘The monkey emoji isn’t racist.’ Social media companies don’t care about the context of this abuse and so you either fight against it or you give in and say: ‘This is just how things are.’ That’s the worry for me and for my children. If you’re a person of colour, you’re a lesser person.”

Despite disabling the comments on his Instagram posts, Deeney still receives a barrage of abuse through private messages. He scrolls through his account to show hundreds littered with the N-word, taunts and monkey emojis. “I get death threats, and even though 98% of them won’t be acted on, you have to be wary of that other 2%. You can’t ignore it if you have a family or kids. I can handle it but I really feel for my missus, who’s new to this and gets abuse because of me, or my younger sister, who’s in her twenties and who also gets it.”

He says it doesn’t affect him on the pitch, but adds: “It’s getting worse in this country, and football is only a part of it.” Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling received racist taunts during a match against Chelsea in December, and Danny Rose said he “cannot wait to see the back of football” after being abused during England’s match against Montenegro last month. The Guardian has also exposed the shocking scale of racism in England’s lower leagues.

“The FA and Uefa really aren’t doing enough,” Deeney says. “Look at their response to the Serbian racist abuse in 2012. They fined them €80,000 and Danny Rose was right when he said that fine is nothing to them. I understand why he might want to quit football because he’s been getting abused on the pitch for his whole career. The larger message that sends is that racism is OK. I don’t think we should be walking off in protest because then you let them win – I’ll go on my own terms and you won’t beat me.”

The media must do more to fight bigotry, Deeney believes. “If you only read the papers, you’d think every black kid in London wears a hoodie and carries a knife – we need to do more to highlight the positives in our communities.” But he and his peers must play their part, too. “Since footballers have such a large social media presence, we can shape the conversation as much as you do.”

Is Deeney positioning himself as a role model? “I don’t like that term because there are plenty of other, better people to choose,” he says. “I’ve made lots of mistakes and when you’re a role model people are just waiting for you to mess up. And I don’t know what mistakes I’ll make next.” Sterling’s denunciation of racism in football, he says, has made him a target for some tabloids. “Raheem’s smart enough to understand that if he messes up for England, he’ll get absolutely slaughtered in the papers because they’re waiting for him. He’s got one up on them and they want to get him back.”

For now, at least, Deeney is focusing on himself. “When I was younger I was just chasing money because I thought that would make me happy,” he says. “And then, when I got my first house, when I started reaching those goals I’d set for myself, I was still miserable. Something was missing. Happiness comes from something deeper.”

Has he found happiness? Deeney pauses and fiddles with his phone on the table in front of him. “One of my good friends killed himself six weeks ago and I had no idea he was having problems,” he says. “He was always a happy-go-lucky kid. That made me think about this deeper happiness – it comes from waking up in the morning and being thankful for being alive. There were a few points in my life where if I’d kept going down that path, I could have died. Luckily, I’m still here, and I’m trying to enjoy myself. I’m going to be unapologetically me.”

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.