Confirmed last week as England’s No9 in Brazil, Sturridge said he was convinced he could strike up a fruitful partnership with Wayne Rooney and was ready to slot into any role demanded of him by Roy Hodgson.
“I’m thankful to God for allowing me to have a decent season. For myself, on a personal level, I’m always working hard to improve. I understand that there’s still a lot of work to be done, in terms of everything,” said Sturridge.
“It’s a different level of football to the Premier League. You have to understand it’s everyone’s dream to play in the World Cup. I’ve been dreaming of this since I was a kid, so for me I’m just excited about it.”
Sometimes tarred with a reputation for being difficult, a bubbling Sturridge has been anything but in the opening phase of the long road to England’s first World Cup group match against Italy in Manaus.
“There’s other nations that are in a similar situation to us. There’s no real favourites at this World Cup. Everyone’s got a chance. It’s like when you look at the Premier League last season,” said the 24‑year-old, who scored 21 Premier League goals last season as he repaid the confidence shown in him by Brendan Rodgers.
“Nobody would’ve said Liverpool would be challenging or have a chance of winning it,” he said. “So regardless of whether we have pressure or not, whether people are saying we’ll win it or we won’t – it doesn’t matter.”
Like his captain Steven Gerrard, the former Manchester City and Chelsea player insisted that the bitter disappointment of falling at the final hurdle in the title race would not weigh heavily on the shoulders of the Liverpool contingent in the England squad.
“It’s boxed, that’s for sure. It was boxed off the day after we lost it. You’ve just got to move on. Your lives have to move on. It obviously wasn’t a great feeling, but we set ourselves the target of getting into the Champions League and we achieved that, so everybody’s content,” he said.
“But sometimes you get so close, you feel like you’ve almost won it and then don’t achieve that – it’s disappointing.”
Amid the ongoing debate about the quality of young English talent and the blockages in the system that restrict opportunities for even the very best, the fact that it has taken Sturridge until the age of 24 to become an established first‑team regular seems instructive.
He will not be drawn on the debate around B teams or whether the likes of Chelsea hoard too much homegrown talent. But he makes the point that footballers simply want to play football.
“I’ve just been given the opportunity – and that’s what I’ve asked for in the past. That’s what I’ve always said: give me that opportunity and then I can try and show what I can do,” he said.
When Rodgers brought him to Liverpool from Chelsea in January 2013, it was a gamble on both sides. But it is one that has paid off in spades.
“I think that it’s down to the clubs which players they want to give a chance to and the philosophies that they choose,” he said. “I can’t speak for Chelsea or City and say they were wrong in this or that. When you’ve got money to spend it’s very easy to buy someone worth £50m rather than say ‘I’m going to play this 20-year-old English player’.”
“It’s easier to buy someone when you have the money to do it. But at the same time, if you give somebody an opportunity, you never know. You can only roll the dice and see how they perform.”
Sturridge, or at least the relaxed 2014 vintage, can afford to be magnanimous about his experience at his previous clubs.
“I’m thankful for everything that happened. It was Man City that put me on the map in terms of giving me a chance to play in the first-team environment, and Chelsea also helped me to improve mentally and as a footballer,” he said. “I would never regret anything.”
The only striker who scored more league goals than Sturridge last season will be lining up against him, knee injury permitting, on 19 June in São Paulo.
“We have had banter together,” he says of his Liverpool team-mate Luis Suárez. “It doesn’t really matter what we are doing, there are still another 10 players out there. I have had a little bit of banter with Sebastián Coates as well because he sits next to me in the changing room.”
Asked whether his partnership with Rooney could be as fruitful for his country as his double act with Suárez has proved for his club, Sturridge said they “get along really well off the field and we get on well on the field”.
“For me he is a senior professional that has been in the game for a long time – he’s experienced European Championships and World Cups,” he said. “I am just learning, still learning. I’m open-eared, taking it all in like a sponge, and when I get older I will be doing the same with the younger players.”
Sturridge conceded that he preferred to play through the middle, but said he was prepared to fit in wherever he was asked to by Hodgson. Some eyebrows were raised when he was asked to play wide in a 4-3-3 during England’s friendly victory over Denmark in March.
“You have to be flexible sometimes and play wide or down the middle. My preference is as the central striker but it doesn’t really matter what my preference is,” he said. “If you can play wide, you play wide. If you are asked to play central, you play central.”