Sutcliffe claims he came up with idea of slashing England 2018 Board

November 17 – Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe (pictured) has claimed that it was his idea for England 2018 to streamline its Board so that it could focus on the campaign to bring the World Cup back to the country for the first time since 1966.

It was agreed at an emergency meeting last Thursday that Sutcliffe, David Gill, Sir Keith Mills, Sir Martin Sorrell and Karren Brady would leave the Board and join a new advisory group.

The Board now contains only eight members, including London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe and former Football Association chairman Geoff Thompson, who is a vice-president of FIFA and a member of the Executive Committee.

But Sutcliffe has insisted that it does not mean he is no longer involved at the heart of the bid.

He told BBC Radio Five Live: “It was one of my ideas, actually.

“Speaking to [bid chairman] Lord Triesman and other Board members, we felt that the board was getting too big.

“What was happening?

“There were arguments, arguments happen within football.

“I felt that it wasn’t going well and I made the suggestion at a Board meeting and I’m happy that the Board meeting confirmed the decision to reduce the size.

“The bid started to lose its focus, arguments developed.

“We said we need to focus on campaigning, focus on organisation and focus on communication.

“We have now all agreed that, so football is united.

“Everybody, since that Board meeting last week, has said they want to support the bid, we are continuing to work hard on the guarantees and I’m sure that we will be successful.”

Sutcliffe also insisted the Government remain committed to the bid, despite the fact that many experts believe that it has now slipped behind Russia and the joint bid from Spain and Portugal.

Sutcliffe said: “What we’ve publicly said is that we support this bid and that we have to be part of the bid.

“FIFA have said that the Government have got to work with the Football Association; we’ve got to give guarantees on security, guarantees on infrastructure, guarantees on tax, which we’re doing.

“Those guarantees had to be ready for the end of the year.

“What we need to do, what we have done is focus purely on the three elements which are going to make the bid successful.

“That is making sure the organisation is in place, and we’ve got the stadia and cities, the Government guarantees need to be in place, we need to make sure that we have a campaigning strategy that gets us 13 of the 24 [FIFA] votes and that the best people that are able to do that, do that.”