Britain WILL make bid to host the World Cup in 2038 or 2042 as Andy Burnham eyes football tournament as chance to drive growth beyond London

Great Britain will enter the race to host the World Cup in 2038 or 2042. 

Football’s biggest tournament has not been hosted in the United Kingdom since 1966, when England won the coveted prize under Sir Alf Ramsay at Wembley.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has identified the competition as a chance to drive investment, tourism and regeneration beyond London, with the i Paper reporting that he is backing a bid to host the tournament.

England reached the semi-finals of this summer’s competition, which was hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The World Cup will be hosted by Spain, Morocco and Portugal in 2030, before heading to Saudi Arabia in 2034. The next available events would be in 2038 and 2042.

Burnham told colleagues at No 10 North on Friday morning that he is looking at how Britain could host the tournament.

The United Kingdom and Ireland are set to host the European Championships in 2028, with Burnham thought to be keen to add further blockbuster sporting events to the national slate, including bringing the Ryder Cup to Bolton, and hosting an Olympic Games with venues in the North of England. 

The Prime Minister was last involved in a British bid for the World Cup when he served as culture media secretary under then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. 

Then, England was humiliated as Russia swept the board to win hosting rights for 2018 in a now-heavily scrutinised executive committee vote. 

England’s bid, fronted by David Beckham, won just two votes from the 22-strong committee. 

Having failed to secure a World Cup to host in the years since, Burnham wondered aloud whether FIFA took issue with the nation. 

‘It makes you wonder whether the authorities at the European and global level have something against us,’ he said during an appearance on the Away Days podcast. 

‘The country that invented the game, you’d think we would have had a bit more of that attention.’

More recently, Burnham hit out at FIFA president Gianni Infantino directly after news of his plan to sell off the World Cup came to light in the wake of this summer’s final. 

The Primer Minister was one of the loudest voices to question Infantino’s plans to broker an unpopular £3.1billion sale of a share of FIFA’s tournaments to a group of investors led by Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital. 

Speaking to reporters in Sheffield on July 31, Burnham said: ‘This was an outrageous suggestion.

‘The idea that it could even be brought forward shows that, in my view, (he) is the wrong man to lead the organisation.’