2018 England

Blackburn Rovers boss Mark Hughes thinks that the 2018 World Cup Finals in England would “galvanise” the whole of Britain. Hughes expects the benefits of the tournament to be felt throughout the UK.

The former Welsh manager said “It is a long way off, but it would be magnificent if the World Cup came back to this country”. “It can create so much interest not only in your own country, but world-wide as well. Everyone then talks about football and wants to go to games.”

Talking about stadia for the 2018 tournament Hughes said “We have the new Emirates Stadium, the new Wembley, perhaps even the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. Everything is here to put on a great show if we ever got it.”

At the same time Gordon Taylor, the PFA’s Chief Executive said “I remember the overall beneficial effect the World Cup had here in 1966.” “But I hope England getting it again for 2018 would focus a lot of minds on the needs for us to give a big priority to international football and youth development programme.”

“The World Cup would be the sort of catalyst which would be needed to make people concentrate on the fact that the pool of players for

England is contracting by the year.” “There is a need to work with schools, academies and centres of excellence to really develop a good quality squad of technically-gifted young players.”

“Currently in England we have probably got eight out of the top 20 richest clubs in Europe - but for a long time now our international success has not equated with the power of football that we have for the club system in this country.”

“We need to work hard to redress that balance. There has got to be an incentive for clubs to bring through their own home-grown English players.”