FIFA vice-president Jack Warner will try to persuade the USA to leave the field open for England's attempt to host the 2018 World Cup by bidding for the 2022 tournament instead.

Warner, the hugely influential president of the CONCACAF federation which covers North and Central America and the Caribbean, is broadly supportive of England's bid but admits it would be "political suicide" for him not to back a USA campaign first.

However Warner believes the USA would do better bidding for 2022 - FIFA will decide on both hosts at the same time in 2011 - and should agree a deal to stand aside.

In an interview with BBC Radio Five Live, Warner said: "I have to convince them not to bid. It is easier for me to convince America to wait until 2022.

"I don't think they will be able to get as many of the votes as they will need [in 2018] for all kinds of reasons.

"I have said to England that until America gets knocked out that's where my vote will have to go.

"My message to the USA - and they don't have to listen - is to try to make a deal for 2022 and I'm quite sure that would have universal support.

"The kind of discussion I would have between England and the US is 'Will you support me in 2022?"'

Warner's backing for England was cemented by the weekend's friendly against his home country Trinidad and Tobago and he said the challenge for 2018 was to do the same in other parts of the world.

He added: "England left behind a positive impression that will last for decades and they have to replicate that in other areas."

The hosts will be voted on by FIFA's 24-man executive committee, a small electorate compared for example to the 106 members of the International Olympic Committee who decide on Olympic Games.

Football Association chairman Lord Triesman, who did not make the visit to Trinidad or FIFA's Congress in Sydney last week as he was having a minor operation, insists that England's World Cup bid should focus as much on the potential legacy to the developing world as much as on personal relationships with FIFA members.

Triesman told BBC Radio Five Live: "I don't think this World Cup will be awarded on the grounds of getting the votes alone.

"There is now a real move to ask 'what legacy will this leave elsewhere?'.

"I believe we will only be competitors in the final analysis if we can offer a legacy to the third world."

Triesman said he had got to know FIFA president Sepp Blatter and UEFA president Michel Platini "pretty well" despite only meeting them a couple of times and that he and Blatter shared the same footballing values.

The FA chairman also defended his decision to dispense with 2018 advisers European Consultancy Network (ECN) and open up a new tendering process for the lucrative contract to be bid consultants.

ECN is run by Peter Hargitay, special adviser to Blatter until moving to work for the FA just before Christmas, and Markus Siegler, formerly FIFA communications director.

Relations between ECN and the FA have broken now to such an extent that lawyers have become involved on both sides and the wisdom of antagonising Hargitay - a friend of Blatter, Warner and Asian football chief Mohamed Bin Hammam - has been questioned.

Triesman said however: "If you are going to give out really big contracts then you have to have an open tendering process.

"I don't accept that there is such a monopoly that only one person or one company can do that for you and I'm sure Sepp Blatter does not believe that either."