'England can stage the greatest World Cup'

Bid team for 2018 kick off Fifa visit with a promise to help world game

(STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA)

England's world cup 2018 bid team yesterday promised the best and most financially successful staging of the tournament ever if they are named as host country in exactly 100 days' time. The deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, received a Fifa delegation at 10 Downing Street, assuring them that the coalition government was "100 per cent" supportive of the bid and claiming that England already had the infrastructure and facilities in place to stage the competition for the first time since 1966.

Fifa's president, Sepp Blatter, had earlier implied that Russia were England's greatest rivals. As the delegation currently touring all bidding countries had warned the Russians last week that they needed to make a start on building their new stadia, the English bid team took the opportunity to emphasise how much was already in place.

Before the six-man Fifa team set off for Wembley on the London Underground, the bid's chief executive Andy Anson told them in Downing Street: "We will help Fifa to serve the needs of football across the world by staging the most spectacular and the most successful World Cup ever. Over the next four days, we'll show you a nation that is in terms of football one of the most passionate and diverse in the world. We will show that a Fifa World Cup in England is not just about what it can do for England, but about what [it] can do for the rest of the world."

The six visitors, who include Danny Jordaan, chief executive of the local organising committee for this year's World Cup in South Africa, do not have a vote on the final decision but the report they submit on each country is supposed to carry significant weight with the 24-man Fifa executive committee who vote in Zurich on 2 December.

Blatter, speaking in Singapore, said that England would be the easiest place to host the World Cup in 2018. "The easiest way to organise the World Cup is to go to England," he said. "Everything is there – fans, stadiums, infrastructure – it's easy."

Speaking about Russia, he said: "You cannot deny Russia if they bid for something. They are more than a country. They are a big continent, a big power."