Blatter hints at China bid for World Cup

    In comments that cast doubt on England and Australia's chances of winning the 2018 finals, Blatter said he wanted to extend the current system under which the World Cup is rotated between Africa, Asia, Europe, North, Central America and the Caribbean, and South America beyond 2014.

    That would make the United States, which has already declared its interest in hosting the 2018 tournament, the best-placed country with the Asian confederation, which now includes Australia, next in line.

    Although Australia is the only declared candidate from Asia, Blatter revealed that Chinese soccer officials had been sounding out the FIFA hierarchy about the possibility of following up the 2008 Beijing Olympics by hosting a World Cup.

    "In the discussions we have had in Zurich about the Olympic soccer tournament, the general secretary of the Chinese federation has been speaking about the possibility of organizing the World Cup," Blatter said.

    "I'm not a prophet, I cannot see where the World Cup is going but you have many times in history when a country had an Olympics and then the World Cup."

    Blatter's comments on rotation will come as a blow to the British Government, which has already announced that it will back a bid for England to host the World Cup in 2018 on the assumption that the tournament will be coming back to Europe that year.

    A decision on the future of rotation will not be made until a FIFA executive committee meeting in South Africa at the end of this year.

    But Blatter made it clear he favored a system, which would mean the World Cup, which was hosted by Germany last year, would not return to Europe until 2022.

    "The situation is that we have decided that rotation shall be installed and we have made the rotation up to and including the 2014 World Cup," Blatter said.

2007-03-02