Exclusive: England still has best World Cup bid despite South Africa claims Minister

By Tom Degun

July 2 – England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup remains the strongest candidate despite the national team’s disastrous performance in South Africa, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has claimed.

A decision on who hosts the 2018 and 2022 World Cups will be made on December 2 this year with England facing tough competition to host the 2018 tournament from Russia and joint bids from Netherlands and Belgium and Spain and Portugal.

Hunt, though, claimed England has the strongest bid to host the competition due to the fact that the English public are passionate football fans and participants alike.

Hunt told insideworldfootball: “There is obviously a lot of disappointment in the country after our World Cup exit but football is our national game, millions of people watch or play it each week and that is why I think we have the best bid on the table for 2018.

“I was in South Africa the World Cup and unfortunately I saw the Algeria game which wasn’t our greatest triumph.

“But what you realise there is that when you host a big sports event, it can unify a nation, it gets everyone to pull together and it creates a tremendous sense of excitement.

“That is why it is tremendous that we have got the Olympics and Paralympics in London in 2012 and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014 but now the one we are really hoping for is obviously the England World Cup in 2018 which would get us over the disappointment of South Africa.”

The Cultural Secretary added that hosting the 2018 World Cup would also help to create new jobs which in the current economic climate would be a huge boost for the country.

He said: “Hosting the World Cup in 2018 creates thousands of new jobs and in a time like this, we need to be thinking about all the things we can do to create jobs for people.”

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