Aged 23 in 2006, the then Tottenham Hotspur striker travelled out to Germany with the 2006 squad as a standby player while the nation waited with bated breath on the fitness of Wayne Rooney.
Scans on Rooney’s injured foot showed enough of an improvement to convince Sven-Goran Eriksson of his readiness for the tournament and that meant a lonely journey home for Defoe as he turned down the offer to remain with the camp.
Speaking in the days after his return he was quoted as saying: "I have never felt fitter and sharper than I was in training and believe I could have scored goals in the tournament.
"It's a strange decision and everybody I speak to thinks so as well."
Fabio Capello had no doubts in 2010 and after sitting on the bench for the opener against the USA and coming on for sixteen minutes against Algeria it was Defoe who spared England the scenario of a group stage exit when he was named in the starting XI for the crucial clash against Slovenia and responded by scoring the only goal of the game.
Another start came against Germany in the first knockout round but it was a night to forget for the team as a whole.
A move to MLS side Toronto in early 2014 was seen by some as signalling the winding down of Defoe’s career but it wasn’t a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for Roy Hodgson who named him in his squad for the friendly against Denmark in March of that year.
When the final cut was made, however, Defoe was named as a standby player for the second time in his career, telling BBC Radio 5 Live he was ‘devasted’ by the news.
"It's hard to find words to describe the feeling," he said and that, you might have thought, could have been that for the player’s international career until his recall in March, aged 34, and his goal against Lithuania at Wembley.
A further place in the squad for the games against Scotland and France followed and now, with Defoe set to spearhead a potentially exciting Bournemouth side in 2017/18 there is the tantalising prospect of a second World Cup, twelve years after that disappointment in Germany.