"It was quite exciting and the draw was quite complex at the beginning!" joked the inspirational Liverpool midfielder.

"To be honest with you the butterflies were going a little bit. I don’t think it was nerves – more excitement.

"I’m looking forward to the tournament so much; I just couldn’t wait to see who we were getting.

"I had a few of my mates over to watch it with me so there was a bit of banter flying around too. I had to wait until the end to properly take in all the groups.

"There’s a couple of tasty groups in there so I think we can be relatively satisfied with ours.

"You wouldn’t say that the draw has been kind to us but I’m sure that the players and staff are happy with it and confident that we can go through to the last 16."

So here’s Steven’s low-down on England’s group adversaries in Germany next summer…
 Steven on Sweden

"On paper it looks like they will be the strongest team we will face in our group but it doesn’t always work that way.

"Although I didn’t play against Sweden in 2002, being drawn against them brings back personal memories for me because I captained England against Sweden in Gothenburg [in 2004] which was an extremely proud moment for me. Hopefully this time we’ll get a better result though!

"It’s nice to be playing them in the third game because we will have had the opportunity to have six points on the board by the time we come to play them. If it has gone that way it could be a case of us battling it out to see who will finish top of the group."
 Steven on Paraguay

"I do remember the game that we played against Paraguay at Anfield back in 2002 but that was quite a few years ago now and I think that their team will have changed and improved quite a lot since then but I’m still confident we can take three points from them."
 Steven on Trinidad and Tobago

"The Trinidad and Tobago game is a great game but it’s also a bit of a dangerous game because we don’t know too much about them.

"We know a few of their players but we’ve never played them in an international before so we’ll look forward to that one as well."