November 6 – England must earn the support of Africa if its campaign to host the 2018 World Cup is to be successful and they are to avoid a similar thing happening to them that befell Chicago’s bid to stage the 2016 Olympics last month, Danny Jordaan (pictured) has warned.
Jordaan, the chief executive of the organising committee planning for next year’s tournament in South Africa, expects there to be a high-profile casualty when polling gets under way among the 24 members of the FIFA Executive Committee in December 2010 and has added his voice to that of CONCACAF federation chief Jack Warner to warn the England bid team against complacency.
He said: “The best team is not necessarily the winning team on match day.
“The difficulty will be in the first round.
“Where you have so many bidders, it is critical to survive the first round.”
Eight countries will enter the first round of bidding for 2018.
Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics was considered a serious contender but they were knocked out in the first round of voting at the International Olympic Committee Session in Copenhagen last month, partly because they had not done enough work to ensure they had the support to get into the later stages.
Jordaan said: ”It is very critical that England focus on the four votes of the African continent.
“That may very well take them through round one.”
The four African votes are held by Cameroon’s Issa Hayatou, Nigeria’s Amos Adamu, the Ivory Coast’s Jacques Anouma and Egypt’s Hany Abo Rido.
The Football Association have been working hard to become the preferred bid of Europe’s governing body UEFA, while a joint Spain-Portugal bid would be likely to attract the South American vote.
But Jordaan predicted that the race could go right to the end.
He said: “Play until the end.”