Warner tells FA to get its act together in 2018 bid

The importance of David Beckham to the Football Association's hopes of landing the 2018 World Cup has been laid bare by the influential Fifa executive Jack Warner, who joked he would have "been killed" if the midfielder had not played in last night's friendly against Trinidad & Tobago. The game was staged on the basis that Warner's vote will be key to the FA winning his support.

The president of the T&T football federation has one of Fifa's 24 executive committee votes that will decide the hosts of the 2018 World Cup and has told the FA to make more use of their most famous player. It could be argued that their response was swifter than even Warner could have envisaged when Capello controversially returned Beckham to the captaincy for last night's game. Warner said that the 33-year-old "could play a role for England as nobody else can".

"I don't know what his fees would be, but he can play a role because he is iconic and people love him," Warner said. "If the English team had come with all its top stars – Wayne Rooney, Owen Hargreaves – to Trinidad and Beckham wasn't here, they would have killed me in this country. If Beckham alone had come, that would have been enough for me."

Warner denied that it was part of the contractual agreement with the FA that Beckham had to play – as was alleged by the South Africa football authorities when England played a friendly in Durban in May 2003. Warner, whose involvement in a 2006 ticketing scandal makes him a controversial figure in world football, had plenty of advice for the FA's 2018 World Cup bid.

Warner criticised the new FA chairman, Lord Triesman, for not attending the recent Fifa congress in Sydney even though he had been in hospital for an operation. "After Graham Kelly [the former FA chief executive who resigned in 1998], nobody knows who is in charge at the FA because it's changed so often," Warner said. "Kelly might not have been well liked, but he was well known." He also warned the FA that they would have to carry the European votes from the Fifa committee or face defeat, as they did to Germany for the 2006 World Cup.

Warner, who heads the Fifa region Concacaf, representing North and Central America and the Caribbean, has been deeply critical of English football in the past. However, he said a country with "a pedigree and football history should not have to wait for over 50 years to host a World Cup", but added that many within Fifa despaired at England's inability to politick its way to a successful bid.

"I said before that they [the English] were 'cold'. I said before that there was no warmth exuding from them as you'd get from a Germany or a South Korea... Perhaps this is because this is 'your' natural demeanour. It wasn't meant to be a criticism of England. It was meant to help them."

Warner criticised the FA's recent sidelining of the consultant Peter Hargitay as a backward step when it came to negotiating their way through the complex politics of Fifa. He also gave short shrift to the notion that the Premier League's ambitious chairman, Dave Richards, was important. "I don't think anybody misses him," he said.

"You can't win the bid by staying in London, whatever lord or lady you are. You have to win the bid by bonding with people, by knowing people on a first-name basis, by lifting a hand to help your fellow man, by letting people know who and what you are ... because there are so many other countries out there competing against England."

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