It is minus six degrees and air billows crisply from the mouths of Muscovites as they march briskly across Red Square, crunching the covering of snow even further underfoot.

St Basil’s Cathedral stands as impressive as ever, it’s brightly-coloured domes echoing the festive fun of a Christmas fair laid out across the famous cobblestones, a melancholy barrel-organ’s chimes echoing off the black mausoleum of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, still lying peacefully in state despite the advent of the World Cup and all its accompanying hullabaloo.

The main accreditation centre is within a palatial museum celebrating victory in the “patriotic war” against Napoleon’s forces; preparations for the draw itself takes place within the Kremlin itself while, in a neighbouring building, Vladimir Putin controls this behemoth of a global superpower.

Every statue, inscription and ornament screams history. But while that is the subject foremost in Southgate’s mind, he is not so much worried about the mightier armies that could await England today as some of those resilient smaller foes.

There is a 40 per cent chance of getting Argentina or Brazil, but Iceland and Costa Rica are both possibilities within the complicated format. And they are the ones to have inflicted such damage to England in the last two major tournaments.

“Very often we have underestimated countries,” said England manager Southgate. “I was in Brazil in 2014 scouting, and I watched Costa Rica’s first two games last time, everybody had ruled them out, and I was sitting there watching them celebrate qualifying after two matches.

“Our preparation for matches, no matter who we play against, has to be very good, thoroughly detailed and prepared for scenarios where things don’t go to plan.

“We are really guilty of underestimating the quality of other teams. In Euro 2016, Iceland had some really good players. None of these teams are a given.”

Today, though, England could yet be accused of underestimating Russia as a country – all 6.6m square miles of it, spread over 11 times zones.

Five of those will be in use for the World Cup and the FA will be keeping their fingers crossed that the draw does not make an absolute mockery of the decision to set a base in Repino ahead of the draw.

If, for example, England are given the third slot of Group H, they will face games in Saransk, Kazan and Samara, three cities barely 200 miles apart from each other in the Volga basin.

The trouble is that the Three Lions’ planned itinerary, flying in and out from their bespoke base near the Finnish border, involves racking up nearly 5,000 air miles.

“We have researched it all,” insisted Southgate. “In terms of the travel the longest flight is three hours. That’s nothing – all the players are travelling that sort of distance for Champions League games.

“Maybe double that distance on some occasions. Our last game at Wembley we drove down by bus to The Grove and that was three hours. So this isn’t a situation like we had in Brazil where Manaus was a six-hour flight. The logistics of the games in Russia are closer together.”

So, too, he insisted, are his players. Southgate watched the recent BT Sport discussion programme in which Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard gave another history lesson how the so-called Golden Generation was ripped apart by club rivalries.

“I could relate to elements of what they said from my time there but there were other situations which definitely developed after that time,” said Southgate.

“I have already had brief conversations with some of the former players about those sorts of thing and club rivalry will always exist.

“But I think we have a different situation where a lot more of our players have grown up not only playing together through the under-21s, but even in age groups before that.

“There is a really tight feel and St George’s Park has helped that. There is a real interaction between the age groups.”