Beckham is leading the five-strong England delegation to present the bid book to FIFA president Sepp Blatter in Zurich tomorrow.

The 35-year-old will be accompanied by Football Association and bid chairman Lord Triesman, bid chief executive Andy Anson, Britain's FIFA vice-president Geoff Thompson and Nothemba Bambiso, a 17-year-old South African who lives in a children's home and coaches in an FA-backed township project.

In an open letter on why he believes England can win the right to host the 2018 World Cup, Beckham says it "an amazing honour" to be chosen to lead the delegation.

He adds: "Hopefully this year we will win the greatest prize in sport twice, by winning the World Cup on and off the pitch.

"As a player nothing could possibly beat playing in front of your own fans in your own country at the World Cup and I hope our players of the future will be fortunate enough to experience this.

"The bid book contains all of the detail of how we would host the World Cup in either 2018 or 22.

"It shows how passionate we are as a nation for football, how our society is amongst the most diverse in the world with communities ready to welcome every team, how we already have fantastic stadiums, training grounds, transport and hotels which will enable us to stage a festival of football creating the most commercially successful World Cup ever."

The England 2018 party will include two other people who have benefited from English football programmes, though they will be in the audience and not part of the five-person delegation.

Eddie Afekafe from Manchester has worked with the Kickz scheme and Manchester City's community scheme, coaching 300 people a week in Moss Side and East Manchester.

Kadra Ege, a recipient of the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service, moved to England with her family from Somalia when she was eight and set up the women's team Brent Ladies FC and helped secure £1million funding from the Football Foundation.

Beckham added: "I met Nothemba last December at the Coaching For Hope project at Khaylitsha, near Cape Town.

"Nothemba is here with me because England supports the World Cup in South Africa, which will be a fantastic occasion, but also because a successful England World Cup bid will help change the lives of countless more Nothemba's.

"A World Cup in England is not just about what it can do for our country but what it can also do for the rest of the world."

The next milestone in the bid process is FIFA's technical inspection at the end of August. This ended in tears for England's ill-fated 2006 campaign when they were judged worse than South Africa and Germany.

This time around, however, England bid officials are confident they will suffer no such setback.

Ian Riley, the director of England 2018's technical bid, had the same role for South Africa's bid for the 2006 and 2010 tournaments and has been careful to ensure there will be no repeat.

Riley told Press Association Sport: "I was working for South Africa for the 2006 bid and FIFA did issue a ranking of the technical report.

"FIFA won't be doing that any more. What they have said is that they will be ranking the bids based on an assessment of risk.

"I genuinely believe we present a low-risk option to FIFA. One of the biggest risk profiles of staging any major event is construction and we have a really good balance of existing stadiums and new builds and I think that alleviates any risk concerns that you may have."

The final vote will be taken by FIFA's executive committee on December 2.

It is expected that 2018 will go to Europe, where Russia plus joint bids by Spain/Portugal and Holland/Belgium are up against England.

The other countries expected to fight it out for 2022 are Australia, United States, Qatar, Korea and Japan.