By Duncan Mackay in Johannesburg
November 29 – England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup received another morale-boosting endorsement today when Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (pictured) said that England deserved to host the tournament for the first time in more than half-a-century.
He told Channel Four News in an interview broadcast today in London: ”I believe that the last one that England hosted, the first and only one was in 1966.
“So that’s already been 44 years ago.
“Now is the time for the UK to host a FIFA [World] Cup again.
“England will always have the competence and will always be a country that will have a great force, great strength to win a bid for the FIFA cup.”
Lula’s endorsement comes two days after Trinidad’s Jack Warner, the FIFA vice-president, also spoke positively about England’s bid following a meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Port-of-Spain.
Lord Triesman, the chairman of England 2018, will be hoping that the support of such senior figures will help take some of the pressure off his leadership, which has led to the former Sports Minister Richard Caborn calling for him to be replaced by Gary Lineker.
Caborn’s comments came after he was dropped from the England 2018 Board by Triesman.
Lula is riding a crest of the wave at the moment after leading Rio de Janeiro’s successful bid to host the 2016 Olympics and with his country getting ready to follow South Africa and stage the 2014 World Cup.
Triesman said: ”He’s been a huge a fan, a huge advocate of English football – he loves it.
“When he made his state visit he made a joke that we might have introduced Brazil to football and taught them how to do it, but they’d become the teachers and we’d become the pupils.”
Triesman (pictured) is preparing to travel to Cape Town for the draw for the 2010 World Cup on Friday.
He plans to use that opportunity to introduce former England captain David Beckham to the 24 members of FIFA’s ruling Executive Committee who will choose the host countries for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments.
Triesman knows that it is a crucial week for both the bid and his own leadership following the resignation last week from the Board of Sir David Richards, the chairman of the Premier League.
Triesman said: ”Perhaps I’ve tried for a consensus pretty hard and haven’t succeeded – if that’s my fault then I accept that.
“But what we’ve now got is a very slimmed-down, very focused group, and we are dividing the work up because we’ve got to win the votes of as many of the 24 as we can.”
Some of the heat has been lifted from Triesman by Lineker’s announcement today that he is not interested in playing a bigger role in the bid than being an ambassador.
Triesman is now hoping that the bid will benefit from a period of stability.
He said: ”There are always arguments in football – you expect to have the arguments, resolve them, get on with it without people going outside the Board and expressing the same criticisms they might have or arguments they might have had in the board.
“But everybody’s moved beyond it and one of the things that I think is very important is that people who have been involved all the way through have committed themselves personally to going around the world and being advocates.”
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