Southgate shows he is able to think outside the box as well as live in it

The popular view of the footballer on tour stems, unfairly, from John Trewick's response, when asked during West Bromwich Albion's ground-breaking Seventies trip to China if he would like the opportunity to see the Great Wall. "Seen one wall, you've seen them all" was his reply, meant ironically, but subsequently used literally, as a blanket condemnation of ignorant sportsmen.

Middlesbrough's Gareth Southgate, literate and eloquent, is the sort of player interested in life in the big wide world, but even he accepts that for a minimum of four weeks in various other parts of south-east Asia, the only wall England's squad will have a chance to see will be the one surrounding their (admittedly luxurious) hotel. Sight-seeing is not an option. "It would be fantastic, but it doesn't happen," he said. "As a footballer you travel the world and don't see any of it.

"Unfortunately we're there to do a job and the focus has to be on playing and training. If we get time I'm sure the boys would be keen to experience some of the culture. But we're not there as tourists. It's a case of focusing on the job. Once you get to the base-camp there's no real difference between being in Holland and being in Japan. And the games come up so quickly we won't have time to focus on anything else."

What, in the meantime, of those long hours between training sessions and watching video-tapes of the opposition? Don Revie tried carpet-bowls, Kevin Keegan race-nights. Sven Goran Eriksson, a man much influenced by sports psychologists, has sanctioned some 400 books, CDs and computer games to add to the baggage allowance, while the players' goody-bags, worth £10,000 each, included a lap-top each. As one of few footballers to compose his own newspaper column, as opposed to employing a ghost-writer, Southgate will be tapping away at his with greater enthusiasm than some: "I'll become an internet user. I'm learning that as I go along – I didn't get taught to use lap-tops at school. We can use it to keep in touch with the world and back home. You need to find things to keep yourself occupied."

His experience of previous tournaments, however, is that too much time spent on any one activity can be counter-productive: "If you spent hours and hours on the internet that could be a problem in itself. And you can get bogged down if you're in the games room all the time. That can be a problem, but it can also be one if you cut yourself off from everyone else. That's difficult and the longer we're away the harder it will be. It's an important side of it. If you start to get frustrated with being away for a long time it will take away from things on the field."

At Euro 96 (when his missed penalty in the semi-final was England's last kick of the tournament), Southgate was something of a new boy; after France two years later and then Euro 2000, he is virtually a senior prefect, who will be keeping a pastoral eye on the juniors: "Last time round I had Gareth Barry with me, who was a team-mate at Villa, and I was paying attention to him. This time, as one of the older lads, when there are lots of younger players in it, it's probably more important. I've got more responsibility in terms of helping the lads who've not been here before, both during the matches and dealing with the tournament itself.

"It means things like making sure you keep an eye on people so you can see they're dealing with things okay. We're going to be away for a long time. Lots of the boys won't have experienced that before. Any way the older guys can help, we will."

If any of the other squad veterans are tempted, over their evening Horlicks, to bemoan a lack of "characters" among the younger generation, Southgate even has a – slightly surprising – nomination: "There's no one like Gazza in this squad. But I can imagine Joe Cole might be a bit like it, although he's not been around the squad for very long. I can imagine that once he's settled he'll be that sort of person." A truly terrifying thought.