Fifa to unveil World Cup bid plan

The bidding procedure for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups is expected to be revealed on Friday.

Fifa will announce a deadline by which bids have to be entered and reveal if the bidding process for the two events will take place at the same time.

A spokesperson for world football's governing body said Belgium and the Netherlands were the only countries to have formally declared bids for 2018.

But England's Football Association has confirmed it will also bid for 2018.

And further competition is expected to come from the United States, Mexico, Spain, China and Australia.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter has said he is in favour of a joint bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, even though such a move would be complicated by his organisation's policy on rotating the World Cup around the world.

The concept of strict continental rotation was thrown out in October 2007, but Fifa still insists that a World Cup cannot be held on a continent that has hosted one of the two preceding World Cups.

For 2018 the situation should be simple, with Africa and South America unable to bid for the event due to South Africa's hosting of the 2010 World Cup and Brazil's staging of the 2014 version.

Countries hoping to bid for the 2022 event would, however, face the risk of being automatically ruled out in the event that Fifa awards the 2018 tournament to a country on the same continent.