What is more, FIFA’s decision to stage the contest for the 2022 World Cup at the same time has added a whole extra layer of possible permutations.

 

No fewer than 11 contestants – the above nine plus Qatar and South Korea – are lining up for that 2022 race, although at most nine will make it to the decisive vote in December 2010.

 

This is because bidders from the same confederation as the eventual 2018 winner are barred from acting as host in 2022.

 

I imagine game theorists are rubbing their hands together in glee at the sheer complexity of it all. 

 

But will all nine 2018 contestants make it as far as the finishing-line in 18 months’ time?

 

I have to say I think that about as likely as newly-promoted Burnley winning the English Premier League next season.

 

For one thing, Sepp Blatter, the FIFA President, is widely assumed to have a marked preference for single-country bidders.

 

If you remember, Tunisia five years ago withdrew from the race for the 2010 World Cup at the eleventh hour after being refused the option of co-hosting the tournament with Libya.

 

Earlier this year that Blatter told a South American Football Confederation meeting that: “As soon as there is a [sole] candidacy or three or four relevant candidacies, we are directly going to reject the double candidacies.”

 

You have to wonder whether Belgium and Holland will deem it worth continuing if the cards really do turn out to be stacked against them in this way.

 

Spain and Portugal, though, I would expect to persevere.

 

Indeed, it has been suggested to me that the outline of a deal might already have been agreed.

 

Under this, I am told, Portugal would be restricted to hosting matches in a single first-round group – presumably designed to enable the national team to play its early matches at home – while FIFA, in effect, would no longer view the candidacy as a joint bid.

 

Another bid I would not be entirely surprised to see fail to stay the course is that from Russia.

 

The country is already staging the 2014 Winter Olympics at the Black Sea resort of Sochi, so that has to be its priority.

 

In normal times, you would expect it to be able to take the demands of hosting both events in its stride – particularly given the four-year gap.

 

And maybe it still will.

 

But of course these are anything but normal times.

 

Broadly, the longer the global economy remains in the doldrums, the greater the chances, in my view, that Moscow will withdraw.

 

I also wonder about Mexico, a country that has already hosted two World Cups, in 1970 and 1986.

 

At some point, I would expect pressure to mount for either it or the US to pull out, so as to allow regional support to coalesce around one candidate, the better to exploit what will probably be split European and Asian votes.

 

If this happened, I think it likely that Mexico would be the one to give way.

 

After all, a third World Cup would be an unprecedented honour and the US could probably assemble a stronger commercial case for being awarded the tournament.

 

I hope this is wide of the mark, but, at this stage, I also think it impossible to rule out swine flu, which has hit Mexico especially hard, from having some influence in this contest.

 

One further factor that could, I feel, lead to pressure to thin down the field is the sheer tightness of the timetable.

 

The due date for 11 weighty bid books to thud into FIFA’s letter-box in Zurich is May 14 – just seven months before the two hosts are to be chosen.

 

If there really are 11, the task of properly evaluating them in this time-frame will be Herculean.

 

Bear in mind that World Cup venues are spread the length and breadth of the country, unlike their Olympic counterparts which – football and often sailing apart – are concentrated in one city.

 

A proper inspection of the Indonesian blueprint, for example, could conceivably involve trips to a dozen or more of that country’s 17,500 islands.

 

I’m not sure it will come to that: Indonesia, generally seen as the rank outsider, is another of those one could see pulling out before the final whistle is blown on the campaign.