As Daniel Sturridge came across to the touchline at Stade des Bourgognes, leant over the fence around England’s training pitch and started making his case that he could live with being on the fringes of Roy Hodgson’s team, one awkward question had to be asked of a player not always renowned for his lack of ego.
Sturridge certainly sounded like he meant it when he declared he would accept being out of the side in England’s opening Euro 2016 game against Russia on Saturday and, in black and white, his words typified the kind of attitude Hodgson must want from his squad. There was praise for Marcus Rashford – “a good player” – and an insistence, repeated several times, that he would not rock the boat if there was no way into the starting line-up past Wayne Rooney, Harry Kane and Jamie Vardy.
“It’s about being here as a team. I look at other countries when they score and everyone is off the bench. They are all involved, all jumping on each other, celebrating – and that’s how we have to be. We have to be a team. It’s very important. We have to be a family.
“We don’t have our mums, dads, kids and all those things here. Out here, we’re the only people we’ve got. So we’re our own family and we have to be together.”
It was some speech even if the over‑riding message – “we can’t win this thing if there are egos or problems in the camp” – did not entirely tally with the public perception of him in Liverpool’s colours or one of the recent images from another England game. Sturridge’s expression when the television cameras panned on him after Rashford’s debut goal against Australia was unsmiling, at best, and there were other parts of the game when he could be seen fiddling with his phone in the stands rather than watching the team.
So, how does that fit with his call for togetherness now? And did he wince seeing that photograph? “No, not at all,” Sturridge says, before trying to offer some context. “As well as the game, it was my first annual charity event [the Sturridge Foundation] in Birmingham that night. My family had put on the event and they were texting me the whole night.
“Of course it’s important to watch my team-mates play but if I receive a text message about my charity event of course I’m going to reply to it. That’s important to me, just as much as it is being here. But of course I want my team-mates to do well and there was no disrespect at all.
“The manager came to me and said he had no problem with it because I was sat behind the bench, not on the bench with the team.”
It was an explanation of sorts, even if it did not entirely explain why he looked so sullen. Yet, in fairness, Sturridge did probably have justifiable reasons to feel concerned at that point, nursing another flare-up of his calf issues and with his place in Hodgson’s squad looking vulnerable.
“I played in the Europa League final and I had some tension in my calf but it wasn’t as if I had torn any muscles,” he says. “It was always going to be gone five to six days after I arrived and it [getting into the squad] was never touch and go as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t worried. I am not the type of person to worry. It was the manager’s decision and If I hadn’t made the squad I would have wished the boys the best of luck.”
It will be the same, he says, in Marseille at the weekend if a player who was once considered a mandatory first‑team pick has to start on the bench. “It is a team game,” Sturridge says.
“It isn’t about individuals. It isn’t about myself, Marcus, Wazza, Harry or Vardy. It’s about the team and how we are going to be successful as a team in the Euros.”
He does, however, note that he “can offer something different” and it is worth remembering that Hodgson considers him the most natural finisher of all his five strikers. Sturridge’s goal for Liverpool in the Europa League final was the case in point. “It was instinctive,” he says. “In training I try to use the outside of my foot quite a lot. I also speak to the goalkeepers to find out things they don’t like to give myself an advantage over opposition goalkeepers.
“That style of shot gives them problems. It’s difficult to get too much power because there isn’t a great deal of back-lift but I’ve picked up things from playing with, or watching, other players. Didi Hamann was very big with the outside of his foot. Deco was very good with the outside of his foot, Paul Merson was top drawer with the outside of his foot. I’m always learning and trying to improve.”
For now, he might have to learn by being what is known in tournament football as a “good tourist”. Yet the suspicion persists that it is not something Sturridge really wants to contemplate. “I’m not here for a holiday,” he says, matter-of-factly.
