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Competition to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups is fierce. Host City looks at how England is preparing for the fight

If England is to win the race to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup, it will have to fend off some strong competition. Spain is likely to be the most obvious threat to England’s Football Association (FA), especially if the Spaniards join forces with neighbouring Portugal – as has been mooted. The bid would then have the benefits of the plethora of top stadiums used in Spain’s La Liga, as well as Portugal’s recent experience of hosting the 2004 European Championships, which featured several excellent modern venues.

Wembley Stadium would host the 2018 World Cup Final

Australia is also going to bid, and this entry will be seen as a dangerous outsider in a part of the world that has never hosted the tournament before. Likewise Qatar gives FIFA the chance to stage the tournament in the flourishing Middle East, while possible entries from China and the US could also give the FA other options to consider.

A return to Europe?
However, with the 2010 and 2014 tournaments taking place in Africa and South America, it seems unlikely that FIFA would hold the tournament outside Europe for a third consecutive time – especially given that they plan to decide on the 2022 hosts at the same time. It is likely that a European bid will get the nod for 2018, with a bolder, more daring selection such as China, Australia or Qatar for 2022.

Other European bids from Russia and a three-way bid by the Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg) will be seen by the FA as less threatening than Spain (with or without Portugal). Russian football is suddenly awash with money, but they are unlikely to have as strong a bid as England; although it could be argued that the legacy of a World Cup in Russia would be greater than it would be in England or Spain.

The FA has set up a company called World Cup 2018 Ltd to manage the bid. They are wholly owned by the FA but will be run as a separate entity. Host City spoke to England 2018 Ltd’s director of communications, Phil Mepham, and asked him about the FA’s venues plan for the bid.

“There are minimum criteria that FIFA lay down, and we want to exceed them, not merely meet them,” said Mepham. “The timetable of events was only etched out on 18 December 2008 at the FIFA Executive Committee meeting that took place in Tokyo during the Club World Cup. We can’t have any deep and meaningful discussions when we’ve only just found out what the rules of the game are. There has been a lot of preparation work going on, but those decisions [on stadiums] are yet to be made. There will be a bidding process for interested cities but it is for you to speculate on which venues will be used at this stage.” And so speculate we shall.

Which venues for 2018?
England could use as few as eight stadiums to make up its bid, but this seems rather paltry considering that Germany used 12 in 2006 and South Africa is using ten venues next summer – especially since England prides itself as the ‘home of football’. However, FIFA regulations state that World Cup stadiums must have a capacity of at least 40,000 (plus media and VIPs), and also that only one city is allowed more than one host stadium – undoubtedly London, which would be permitted two.

When you analyse England’s stadiums, it becomes surprisingly awkward to even fulfil a list of eight suitable venues, allowing for the one stadium per city rule. English football has developed in clusters around major conurbations, which often means having two fantastic stadiums in the same city (eg. Manchester United and Manchester City; Liverpool and Everton).

London’s two venues would probably be Wembley Stadium (90,000 seats, which would host the final) and Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium (60,355). Twickenham, the city’s 82,000-seater rugby stadium, has been ruled out for football use.

And so what of the remaining six venues required? Manchester’s Old Trafford would be a sure-fire bet at 76,212; likewise the brand new stadium that Liverpool hope to be playing in by 2018 (see Box 1). Newcastle’s St James’ Park (52,387) and Sunderland’s Stadium of Light (49,000) are big, impressive arenas in the North East, while Birmingham’s Villa Park (42,640) would represent the Midlands. That brings the total to seven.

Manchester also has the impressive City of Manchester Stadium (COMS), home of Manchester City and showpiece of the 2002 Commonwealth Games. But that would require FIFA giving a rare green light to a second city having two host stadiums.

Precedents for this include Lisbon and Porto each having two stadiums for Euro 2004 in Portugal, but that is a UEFA-run event. FIFA may not be so willing to make such allowances. The last time that multiple host cities have had two stadiums at a World Cup were Mexico 1986 (Mexico City and Monterrey) and Spain 1982 (Madrid, Barcelona and Seville). But the World Cup has come a long way since the mid-1980s and FIFA may want the tournament to better represent the whole of England, rather than allowing Manchester to use two stadiums as well as London. Indeed FIFA officials may also be against the idea of using both Newcastle and Sunderland, given that they are so close geographically.

So let us imagine that FIFA wanted either COMS or the Stadium of Light trimmed from the list with a venue in an alternative city used – where would it be?

Expensive upgrades
Other cities keen to host World Cup group games (the aforementioned venues are sure to host all games from the quarter-finals onwards) may baulk at the many millions of pounds required to get their venues up to FIFA World Cup specifications. Leeds’ Elland Road and Sheffield’s Hillsborough are two examples of stadiums with 40,000-plus capacities that are a long way below FIFA-required standards. The recent poor performances of both stadiums’ resident teams mean that they are currently in debt and not really in a position to redevelop their stadiums without substantial support from the FA or local councils.

The same could be said of several arenas that have excellent facilities, but which are below the required capacity. Derby’s Pride Park, Southampton’s St Mary’s and Coventry’s Ricoh Arena are all modern stadiums with capacities over 30,000, but the host teams simply do not have the finances available to expand – nor the demand from local supporters to sustain a capacity increase in the long-term. Sustainability is important to FIFA, and if they believe that a resident team could be left with a stadium they drastically cannot fill after the World Cup leaves town, this will not be viewed favourably by visiting inspection committees.

One sad postscript to all this is that Derby County were talking openly about an expansion of Pride Park to over 40,000 upon their promotion to the Premier League in May 2007. This talk was immediately quashed following relegation a year later, though rumours of a big-money takeover by a Middle East consortium persist – in which case, Pride Park could suddenly become a strong candidate to host 2018 games.

But that still only brings the total to eight stadiums. What if the bid team feel ten or 12 venues will be necessary to convince FIFA that England is ready to host? What if FIFA want to see a 40,000-capacity stadium that caters for the South West of England, where currently there are none? Germany has set the bar very high in terms of hosting the World Cup in Europe, with 12 venues in 12 host cities spread evenly across the country.

High-tech, low cost solutions
Although the economic climate will inevitably be different once 2018 comes around, the current downturn cannot be ignored as England prepares its bid. Clever technologies that are kind on the purse strings are therefore likely to be popular. If older stadiums do need to be renovated as part of a World Cup preparation process, then technologies that save the clubs money will be warmly welcomed in areas like seating, lighting, display screens, audio systems and turfing.

When revamping an old stadium in readiness for the world’s showpiece football event, not all cities can afford a transformation such as that seen at Berlin’s Olympiastadion – built for the 1936 Olympic Games, and expensively modernised for 2006. The budget simply won’t be available. Plus, any renovated stadiums in England would likely only be staging group games anyway, whereas Berlin had a World Cup Final to prepare for.

Suppliers are adjusting to the demand for more economical solutions. Take seating, for example. Australian manufacturer Camatic provided seating for Lisbon’s Euro 2004 venue Estádio da Luz, as well as major projects like the huge Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia and the Seattle Seahawks stadium in the US. Their ‘Nostalgia’ range of seating is, according to the company, “designed to be incorporated into older stadiums where it seamlessly blends with the surrounding history and charm, while at the same time employing the latest technology”. Low maintenance and designed in consultation with leading ergonomists, seating ranges such as this, that are in tune with the economic situation, could prosper if England gets the green light to refurbish one or more of its traditional old stadiums.

Lessons from the past
Crowd management and security is sure to be high on the agenda during any World Cup, let alone in a country like England where the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster gave everyone in the country a wake-up call regarding the importance of avoiding any overcrowding and potential crushes. London’s Wembley Stadium incorporates the use of ‘line-up gates’, provided by Mojo Barriers Ltd. This is a modular gate system that is used for entranceways with large queuing crowds to manage the ingress of the crowd. “Their unique design includes areas suitable for security check points and ticket collection, while also ensuring the crowd enters the site in an ordered fashion. The gates are designed to remain upright under substantial pressure,” say the company. This is certainly one affordable way to regulate the flow of visitors entering the stadium.

Lighting is another area where all businesses can economise, especially sports stadiums. Stoke’s Britannia Stadium is lit by Musco Lighting, whose Multi-Watt option, a two-level switching system, reduces light levels to 50 per cent (in low mode) for flexibility in field use and energy savings. A World Cup bid that showed such tiered levels of energy efficiency across all stadiums would surely impress an increasingly environment-conscious FIFA.

Despite the challenges ahead, there are huge reasons for England to be optimistic about its bid for 2018. The country has half a dozen venues that are already perfectly prepared for hosting games at the most prestigious international football competition in the world. The hard work will be in ensuring that the remaining stadiums (be it two, four or six others) are brought up to standard in a sustainable fashion at a cost that is affordable to the venue owners.