Steven Gerrard looks relieved to have left Liverpool behind. This season has been hard on Gerrard. He has appeared muted on the field, lacking the ferocity that has so often carried those around him to victory.

Away from the football he has been forced to endure CCTV footage of his nightclub brawl broadcast on rolling news networks and tabloid speculation about his private life. The Mersey bubble can never have felt so claustrophobic.

If all goes to plan he will be away from his home city for eight weeks and he hopes the club he loves can sort out all the problems that are besetting it while he is away. When he comes back from South Africa in July, there could be new owners, a new manager, new players. Or it could still be embroiled in the same old mess.

"This season was a massive disappointment after finishing second the previous season," he said. "The challenge for me then was, can we go one step further? But this season we took steps backwards.

"That's the disappointing thing and it has been a very difficult season, both personally and for everyone in the squad, to deal with the number of setbacks we've had.

"But as a footballer I've always said that I look forward rather than back, I've got to put that behind me now. There's a massive tournament round the corner and I've got to change my focus to England. I've got to make sure I do everything I can personally to help make this team successful.

"There's a long time after the World Cup, once it's over, to change your focus back to Liverpool. Hopefully things might happen while I'm away. There might be players coming into Liverpool to help strengthen the team. We'll have to wait and see, but I'm not really interested at the moment in what's going on at Liverpool."

The changes at Anfield, if any, will determine Gerrard's own future. The relationship with Rafael Benítez, never warm, has apparently deteriorated and with the club's finances in a poor state, one of the major players might have to be sold to enable the club to rebuild. That could mean the departure of Gerrard.

He is 30 at the end of the month and going into what will most likely be his last World Cup. This is a period when he will reflect on what he has achieved and what he still wants to achieve. With Jose Mourinho, a long-time admirer, seemingly on his way to Real Madrid he must be tempted by a fresh challenge in a fresh environment.

Any decision will be deferred however. Gerrard has been here before. He knows his own capacity to torment himself. While in Portugal for Euro 2004 he decided to join Mourinho at Chelsea and sent the Portuguese a text to that effect.

There was fury back on Merseyside, with some so-called Liverpool fans sending him death threats. After an emotional talk with his father, Paul, he changed his mind. He does not want a repeat in South Africa.

"There has been speculation about my future for the last two or three months but it seems to be that way for a long time," he said. "I fell into the trap [six] years ago, when I was driving myself mad thinking about my future.

This time I won't make that mistake – I won't consider my future or think about what is going to happen to me until after the World Cup.

"I used to go back to my room and read the papers and go on the internet and then I would speak to people at home who were telling me that there was stuff going on. I knew that Chelsea were very interested because my agent was telling me. But this year that won't be happening.

Every time I went back to my room I was driving myself mad thinking about should I go to Chelsea or not. Mentally it might have drained me. I won't make that mistake again."

While he can appear sullen in his public appearances and fearsome on the pitch, Gerrard is surprisingly sensitive. In 2005, when he handed in a transfer request because the club let him down over a new contract, he spiralled into what he called a "panic breakdown".

Chelsea had come back again with a £32 million bid and he was convinced he was leaving. In his book he writes about watching the television through tears as fans burned his shirt outside the Shankly Gates. The "claustrophobia of stress" gave him a blinding, unceasing headache and he ended up "eating paracetamol like Smarties".

Gerrard does not want to find himself in that state again. He is older and tougher now. He is determined to insulate himself in England's training camp in Rustenburg.

"I feel as if I am experienced enough now to park issues like that," he said. "If other people want to talk about my future I can't control that. People around me are under strict instructions not to be talking about my club future or any speculation. It's not important now. Agents, friends and family have been told not to be talking about club stuff to me.

"Once you start training, you get talking to the lads and the banter starts flying and people start talking about World Cups and that helps you put what's happened at club level firmly behind you.

That's gone now, there's nothing I can do to change what happened this season. What is in my control is what happens going forward. It's getting close now and I'm excited. I can't wait to sample another World Cup."

Gerrard will go down as a Liverpool great. But whether he goes down as one of the great England players will be determined in the next two months.

"My career has gone really well up to now," he said. "But there is still a lot of ambition in myself to go and achieve big things. The biggest thing you can do as a player is to win the World Cup. So that's the challenge.

"The hunger is still there. The World Cup is the pinnacle for any player, it's a fantastic stage to go and do well on. That's the challenge for me."