The United States, Mexico and Canada on Monday announced a joint bid to stage the 2026 World Cup, aiming to become the first three-way co-hosts in the history of Fifa’s showpiece tournament.

US Soccer Federation chief Sunil Gulati, who announced the bid with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts, insisted they had the full backing of President Donald Trump, despite the US leader’s rocky relations with Mexico. Gulati said 60 of the tournament’s matches would be staged in the US, with Canada and Mexico hosting 10 each. The US would host all knockout games from the quarter-finals onwards, he added. He played down the possibility that politics could hamper the bid, emphasising that Trump was “especially pleased” with Mexico’s involvement.

The joint bid will start as the heavy early favourite in the race, despite US prosecutors leading the probe into football corruption which rocked the sport in 2015 and led to the downfall of former Fifa boss Sepp Blatter. A bid from the North America region for 2026 had long been regarded as inevitable.

That sense of certainty hardened last year, when Fifa’s council ruled that neither Europe nor Asia would be eligible to run for the 2026 tournament on the grounds that the regions are hosting the next two World Cups. Russia is hosting the 2018 finals, followed by Qatar in 2022. With Europe and Asia ineligible, Concacaf could in theory face potential competition from the Africa, South America and Oceania regional confederations.

US soccer officials had been publicly coy about the possibility of a future World Cup bid since the country lost out to Qatar in the battle for the 2022 tournament at a corruption-tarnished vote in Zurich in 2010. However the prospect of a fresh American bid gathered momentum in 2014 after the World Cup in Brazil.

That campaign captured the imagination of US sports fans, with huge crowds attending public screenings of games at cities across the country. The country’s club game is also booming, with record numbers attending Major League Soccer games in 2016.