Five sponsors, including Dutch bank ING, are backing the Belgian and Dutch joint bid to host the Fifa World Cup in either 2018 or 2022.

The bid will be sponsored by construction and property development company BAM, airline KLM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, recruitment company Randstad and ING, the Dutch bank which currently sponsors the Renault Formula One team. The five companies will back the bid until December 2010, when Fifa will announce the hosts of the two competitions.

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"Whenever we work together, we're very strong," said Johan Cruyff, the most famous player in the history of Dutch soccer, speaking at the launch of the bid at the Philips Stadion, home of PSV Eindhoven. "To collaborate on such a bid you need to have everything organised at home. You need everybody, really everybody, together. You can’t do anything alone, you have to work as a team."

The bid's managing director Harry Been added: "We are proud that large companies are demonstrating their confidence in the impact and significance of football. They are encouraged by the fact that the governments in both candidate countries also understand the enormous value that the Fifa World Cup could have in Belgium and the Netherlands."