REVEALED: Birmingham's World Cup bid involves Villa, Blues, Albion, Wolves and Walsall

Sep 13 2009 by Jonny Greatrex, Sunday Mercury

WE’RE there. With two games to spare.

While the nation celebrates our soccer heroes sweeping effortlessly into South Africa 2010 another team of people is kicking off a very different World Cup battle.

Sports chiefs at Birmingham City Council have been working feverishly to present the Football Association with their proposal for using the city as a host venue for a 2018 England World Cup.

They are battling it out with likes of Manchester, Newcastle and Bristol for the chance to be host to the group stages of the competition.

But they want to do more than just bring four teams to the region for group stage matches.

They want to make the region the hub of thousands of fans’ experience of the four-week footy festival, with a massive national fan park based at the National Exhibition Centre.

“We want to make Birmingham the HOME of the 2018 World Cup,” Birmingham City Council assistant director of sports and events Steve Hollingworth told the Sunday Mercury.

“As part of our bid we submitted a proposal to use the NEC as the national fan park for the tournament.

“In Germany 2006 we saw a kind of second-generation fan park – but we want to take this much further.

“The NEC say they can accommodate 100,000 fans, including 40,000 who can camp on the site. We could have supporters from all over the world based here.

“We can have big screens showing the games, five-a-side tournaments, massive opportunities for retail outlets – and the whole thing could be self-financing.

“When you think the airport will be having the runway extended, and there are plans for a high-speed rail link to London, we will really be set up for international travellers.”

If the bid to become one of the 11 cities chosen to host the group stages of the tournament is successful, Villa Park will be used for competitive games because it already meets the necessary criteria.