A loose cannon in a Fifa suit yesterday attempted to shoot down England’s bid for the 2018 World Cup finals, upsetting the FA with an off-target volley of abuse that attempted to portray the English as isolated and friendless in Europe.

The FA said that it is “shocked and disappointed” at the outburst from Jack Warner, a Fifa vice-president, who said that he would do everything in his power to prevent England hosting the tournament.

“There are moves to give it to England. I must fight that,” Warner, the president of Concacaf and effectively head of the Trinidad & Tobago Football Federation, said. “If, by chance, in 2018, the World Cup were to go to Europe, I’m quite sure, with the English luck as it is, they won’t get it,” he said. “It’ll be Italy, Spain, or it might even be France. Nobody in Europe likes England. England – who invented the sport – has never had any impact on world football. England at no time has had the love and support of Europe. For Europe, England is an irritant.”

In May, trenchant comments from Warner helped to force the removal of John McBeth from his post as Britain’s Fifa vice-president before he had started. Warner accused McBeth of racism and “evil” after he gave an interview saying that African and Caribbean countries were “tainted with greed”.

Warner is sensitive to such an allegation. In 2006 he was accused of profiting to the tune of £500,000 from the illegal sale of World Cup tickets, including some for England matches, distributed via his travel company. Which happened to possess the exclusive rights to sell Trinidad & Tobago’s entire allocation.

He denied selling black-market tickets. Fifa did not prove his involvement, but its ethics committee criticised his conduct while secretly fining Warner’s son, Daryan, nearly US$1 million for reselling tickets ordered by his father at several times face value.

Many of the Trinidad & Tobago World Cup squad, including Shaka Hislop, now of FC Dallas, the MLS side, Kenwyne Jones, of Southamp-ton, and Stern John, of Sunderland, have been blacklisted by their national association, which they are suing, in a bonus row.

Warner was also involved in a ticket scandal in Trinidad in 1989, when his federation printed 45,000 tickets for a World Cup qualifier against the United States. The stadium’s capacity was 28,500. The 64-year-old has been in charge of Concacaf since 1990 and has recently been reelected until 2011. He is one of the closest allies of Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president.

Fifa is rotating the World Cup between continents until 2014, but is expected to introduce a format that stops the continents that held the previous two World Cup finals from bidding. In 2018, that would be Africa and South America. So England’s bid is likely to be pitted against one from Warner’s constituency – North and Central America and the Caribbean.

“I really don’t believe that we should just lay down and play dead to anyone who wants to take the World Cup from Concacaf,” Warner added. “I know in Fifa there are those persons who believe the rules should be changed to satisfy Europe, but we shall fight it to the end.”

Geoff Thompson, the FA chairman, said: “I have written to Jack Warner to clarify the accuracy of the quotes and request his views and an explanation as to why he made them if they are accurate. We were shocked and disappointed to read the views attributed to Mr Warner.”

Michel Platini, the Uefa president, will fight for a European World Cup in 2018 and is believed to support England, while Franz Beckenbauer, a Fifa’s executive committee member, said last month: “There is only one serious candidate and it is England.”

Leeds United will start the Coca-Cola League One season with a 15-point deduction after their appeal against the penalty was rejected by the Football League last night. The chairmen of the League’s other 71 clubs voted to uphold the sanction imposed on Leeds for failing to meet its strict rules on insolvency. Leeds went into administration at the end of last season but Ken Bates, the owner, bought them out of it. However Leeds failed to agree to pay off an acceptable amount of their debts. The deal meant that the club had not come out of administration via a Company Voluntary Agreement that the League demands. Bates wrote to all Football League chairmen, arguing that the punishment was a “breach of natural justice”, but a vast majority still voted to uphold it.

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