Gareth Southgate pleased with Russia 2018 challenge as fans urged to be prepared

Speaking after Friday's ceremony at the Kremlin, the England manager admitted he was relieved to have avoided Brazil and Germany but said his team face a "fascinating" challenge against Group G rivals Tunisia, Panama and Belgium.

"There's one team we know so much about in Belgium - one of the best teams in the world - and two teams we, at the moment, know a lot less about," the 47-year-old said.

"Panama, we've never played, and Tunisia have qualified through the African group, which is strong, so they're to be respected.

"We're the second-ranked team in that group so it's understandable how people will pitch it but, equally, in the last two tournaments we went out to teams we thought we'd beat.

"So we've got to be mentally prepared in those games, not in terms of underestimating them, because I don't think we do that with anybody, but we'll have to handle being the favourites and that's one of the challenges of being an England player."

With Belgium able to call upon Premier League stars such as Kevin De Bruyne, Eden Hazard and Romelu Lukaku, they are currently ranked fifth in the world - 10 places higher than England.

But the links between the teams extend to the dugouts as Belgium are managed by former Swansea, Wigan and Everton boss Roberto Martinez - a man Southgate is used to seeing at games and with whom he once shared a TV studio at the 2012 European Championships.

Martinez, who also looked happy with his fixtures, told reporters Southgate is "a gentleman I admire and I wish him the best of luck, apart from the game in the World Cup".

That game, the pair's last in the group, is in Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, and takes place on June 28.

England's opener is against Tunisia, ranked 27th, in Volgograd on June 18, with the game against 56th-ranked Panama in Nizhny Novgorod on June 24.

This means England will play in three new stadiums and avoid any particularly arduous journeys from their base in Repino, near St Petersburg. Volgograd is 1,000 miles away, two and a half hours by plane, while the flights to Nizhny and Kaliningrad will both be under two hours.

In total, the team will travel 4,700 miles in the group stage, which sounds a lot but this is the world's largest country and they have avoided trips to the most distant, and warmest, venues and will only cross one time zone.

But while that should not present too many problems to England's well-travelled players, the team's fans will need to do their homework before next summer.

With this in mind, t he Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has launched a campaign called 'Be on the Ball' which intended to provide travel advice and a preparation checklist for visiting supporters.

Prepared with help from the British Embassy in Moscow and the Russian authorities, the FCO is hoping the campaign will build on the recent positive Champions League visits by fans from Liverpool and Manchester United.

In a statement, FCO minister Sir Alan Duncan said "s tart doing your trip research now" and urged supporters to register for a FAN ID, the document they will need along with their tickets to get into matches, as well as to enjoy free game-day travel and visa-free entry to Russia.