It was launched in an office at the Treasury. “We can become the sporting nation of the world,” Gordon Brown told The Times. Over tea and biscuits, the Prime Minister set out his vision of an historic sporting decade, with the 2018 World Cup finals after the 2012 Olympic Games.

“It reinforces the image of England around the world,” Brown said, “but also the sense that we are taking ourselves seriously as a sporting nation.” But, as it happens, not so seriously that he is willing to stump up for it.

The 2018 World Cup bid began that day in February 2007 as it has fared ever since — messed up by politicians and their empty promises.

And we will not forgive them if they cost us the chance of hosting our very own World Cup finals; if they cost us the sight of Brazil’s golden shirts glistening under lights at Old Trafford, our city centres abuzz with fans from afar and the thrill of watching England seeking to replicate Wembley in 1966.

Times Archive, 1966: England surmount their final test

The players had proved Ramsey right. The cup belonged to them

• Topic: World Cup 1966

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Our football fans will not be understanding, and why should they be tolerant, given that it is more than four decades since the World Cup came to England?

We know we have the roads, the airports, the stadiums and the fans to fill them; if we fail it can be only through the ineptitude of our football leaders. And the buck will stop with Lord Triesman, chairman of the FA and the bid.

There remains a reasonable chance that England can still triumph, but only if the next 12 months are spectacularly more effective than those just gone, a year notable for reinforcing the adage that sport and politics — actually, make that politicians — do not mix.

Gerry Sutcliffe, the anonymous Minister for Sport, and Richard Caborn, his equally unremarkable predecessor, who is the PM’s 2018 Ambassador, have proved as useful as unwanted Mulberry handbags. The only purpose in having government figures on the board is to ensure government funding. But the contribution now amounts to a £2.5 million loan rather than the £5 million promised.

Given the billions that a World Cup can generate, it is a false economy even in straitened times. And it says little for the political sway of Triesman, a man given a peerage for services to the Labour Party but now left begging in vain to Downing Street.

It is a shortfall that has a daily, diminishing effect on the work of the bid, forcing staff to scrabble to make up the missing funds, fretting over every expenditure. Decisions are being sent to monthly committees that should be resolved in minutes.

Now the bid seeks to beef up its public relations — perhaps with Simon Greenberg, the outgoing Chelsea director of communications — but this is all time and energy wasted looking inwards.

Triesman must take the blame for this year of false starts. It was he who formed that first board, so political that they should have met at Westminster rather than Wembley. He who was warned by his fellow directors that his £100,000 salary for working two days a week must be earned by clocking up some air miles.

Andy Anson, the chief executive, has toured the globe, but, with respect, the 24 voting Fifa members know he is not the big cheese.

It was Triesman who managed to enrage the Premier League, which should be among his most powerful allies, by publicly slating its indebtedness last year, when now he relies on its players to spread the word and its chairmen for the stadiums.

And it is Triesman who has risked a charge of tokenism by waiting until Baroness Amos has departed before appointing Karren Brady, the former Birmingham City managing director, and Paul Elliott, the former Chelsea player, to the board. Respected figures both, they deserve better than to appear symbols of the bid’s politically correct diversity.

While we are at it, why no directorship for Geoff Thompson, who sits on the Fifa executive committee alongside the men who will decide England’s fate? Why not hug him close, given that we are relying on him to carry several votes?

Presumably because Triesman’s relationship with Thompson is also strained, with the former easing the latter out of the FA chairmanship six months before the time that they had agreed upon.

At least, belatedly, Triesman has got round to inviting some football people to join his personal mission and while Sir Dave Richards, chairman of the Premier League, may not fit anyone’s photofit of a sophisticated politician, we are not the only nation who lack a Beckenbauer or Platini.

Even without one, we should have enough heavyweight persuaders, but what vision will they sell? “Be patient,” is the mantra from bid headquarters, but so far we have been struck only by the lack of dynamism and the inability to give a handbag without it becoming a huge controversy.

There is time enough to turn things round, starting at the World Cup draw next month, when David Beckham will provide some sparkle. As for the strategy, that can simply be stolen from the successful 2012 bidders: multicultural England will be a joyful home from home for competing nations.

It is not a bad selling point, and this country could host a fantastic World Cup — which is exactly where we started a year ago before Triesman and his political “friends” started complicating things.

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