World Football Championship discussed at government level
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is determined to do everything to ensure that the 2018 World Football Championship is awarded to Russia. On Tuesday Mr Putin met with the Minister of Sport and Tourism, Vitaly Mutko, setting him a very concrete task: "Prepare an application for Russia to host the 2018 World Football Championship".
Of course, it requires a very serious application, which the Russian Government must support, Mr Mutko replied. He pointed out that it is necessary to have 10 cities with stadiums seating 40,000 spectators each and the cities should meet the standards at least on five positions: an international airport, a developed transport infrastructure, hotel accommodation, and proper security and medical service standards.
"The tournament will greatly advance Russia as a tourist area", Mr Mutko said. Mr Putin for his part noted that Russia's participation in the championship as the host would enable it "to develop the infrastructure of these 10 cities approximately in the same way as that of Sochi". Mr Mutko named the following cities that could host matches: Sochi (the Slava Metreveli Central Stadium, the Zhemchuzhina Sochi Football Club home arena with a capacity of 10,200), Krasnodar (Kuban, the Kuban team stadium with a capacity of 45,000), Rostov (Olymp-2, the Rostov Football Club Stadium with a capacity of 17,000 currently in the process of repair to increase the seating capacity), Moscow (Luzhniki, the unofficial home arena of Spartak and CSKA with a capacity of 78,360; Locomotive, the Locomotive Football Club Stadium with a capacity of 28,800; Dynamo, the stadium of Moscow Dynamo with a capacity of 36,540, currently under reconstruction; the Eduard Streltsov Stadium, which is the home stadium of the Moskva Football Club, with a capacity of 13,400) and the Moscow Region (the Khimki Football Club Stadium and temporarily the stadium of the Moscow Dynamo with a capacity of 18,000; and Saturn, the Saturn team's stadium with a capacity of 16,500).
Among other cities Mr Mutko named St Petersburg, which is planning to complete the reconstruction of a stadium by the end of 2011 (Petrovsky, the Zenit Football Club stadium, with a capacity of 21,560; the Kirov Stadium, a former Zenit arena, currently under reconstruction due to be completed by 2011. The project capacity of the new stadium, which will be called Gazprom-Arena is 62,000), Yaroslavl (Shinnik, the stadium of the Shinnik team with a capacity of 22,984) and Kazan (Tsentralny, the arena of the current Russian champion, Rubin Kazan, with a capacity of 30,000) where a large amount of infrastructure work is being done.
There are several more cities, two of which may be added to the above list: Samara, Volgograd, Saransk and Yekaterinburg.
"Regardless of the decision on where the championship will be held all the programmes we have discussed must be implemented," was Mr Putin's response. Russia joined the list of bidders for hosting the 2018 World Championship in mid-March. FIFA put Russia on the list of contenders along with 10 other candidates: Australia, Britain, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, the US, as well as joint bids by Belgium/the Netherlands and Spain/Portugal.
The bidders are currently wrestling with organisational matters. The agreement on the duties of the host is to be sent to FIFA before December 11, 2009. By May 14, 2010 the contesting federations have to submit full applications to FIFA. FIFA will name the host of the 2018 World Championship in December 2010.