England’s hopes of staging the 2018 World Cup received a boost today after Sepp Blatter, the president, confirmed that Fifa are considering relaxing the way it handles the bidding process.

World football’s governing body has traditionally maintained a rotation policy whereby two countries from the same continent are unable to host successive tournaments.

Today, though, Blatter confirmed he had had a change of heart over those plans. “I am advocating we open the market - it will give a better competition,” he said. “We are not in a very comfortable situation in South America. We only have one bidder and, if we maintain this rotation system as we have now, that could be the case again.

“It would be better to have three or four associations trying to get the No 1 competition of the world.”

Richard Caborn, Gordon Brown’s World Cup Ambassador for 2018, welcomed Blatter’s comments, which appear to end any chance of the finals being automatically handed to a country from the Concacaf federation from North and Central America and the Caribbean.

Caborn said: “It’s good to hear Sepp Blatter is supporting the case for a more open competition for the World Cup in 2018. Staging the World Cup is an enormous prize and tremendous privilege, which is why it deserves a proper open competition.

“Obviously, we must wait for a final decision on rotation from Fifa but in the meantime I will continue to talk to the FA about a possible England bid.”

England and Russia are now both certain to bid, and they are likely to face opposition from China, Australia and a joint bid from Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

A decision is now expected to be taken by Fifa’s executive committee later this month, ending the current rotation system that secured the 2010 finals for Africa - South Africa won the bid – and 2014 for South America, where Brazil were the only bidders.

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