England’s bid for the 2018 World Cup was thrown into doubt yesterday when Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, said that Europe may not host the tournament until 2022 or even 2026. Blatter was talking on a visit to London to meet Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and, typically, he was revelling in his role as the most powerful man in the game.

In the morning, Blatter raised the prospect that England may have a very long wait to host the finals.

He suggested that he would give his considerable personal support to keeping the rotation system that will take the tournament to South Africa in 2010 and South America, probably Brazil, in 2014. Under that procedure, which has yet to be ratified beyond 2014, the 2018 tournament would probably go to the Concacaf region [North and Central America and the Caribbean] with Mexico, the United States or Canada as potential hosts. Blatter said that Asia, notably China, and Australia would also be in consideration.

He then departed for his meeting with Brown and Richard Caborn, the Sports Minister, and while appearing to be more reassuring about England’s prospects in those talks, he made it plain that he could give no guarantees. If the 2018 finals come to Europe, Blatter indicated privately that England would be the clear favourite, but Fifa’s executive committee will make the decision on rotation in November.

With Europe having eight of the 24 places around the table, the FA will have to set about some frantic politicking.

“You can understand the eagerness of England, supported by the politicians and the public, to host the World Cup in the motherland of football,” Blatter said. “But it all depends on the decision by the executive committee later this year. “[It] must take a decision whether the rotation should include all the confederations, in which case the 2018 World Cup should be in Concacaf. It could also decide that the Americas should be considered as one and then rotation could go to Asia. It may also be that the majority of the committee, where you have eight European representatives, can find the 13 votes needed for the World Cup to return to Europe.”