FIFA's president, Joseph Blatter, is set to come to Russia for a two-day official visit on October 14th. His visit is connected with Russia's hopes to host the FIFA World Cup in 2018 or 2022. Mr Blatter is expected to discuss this matter in detail with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Apart from Russia, Britain, the United States, Indonesia and Japan all submitted FWC 2018 applications, as well. Unified applications came from Belgium and the Netherlands, and also Portugal and Spain. Qatar and South Korea are eager to host 2022's football championship, though this list will certainly become longer once the unlucky candidates from the 2018 group are added to it. Under the application strategy presented by the Russian Football Union (RFU), 14 Russian cities and 15 sports arenas are to host the games. According to the existing FIFA rules, FWC events must be held in at least ten cities, in 12 stadiums seating at least 40,000 spectators. The stadium for the final game must hold at least 80,000 people.
The cities included in the Russian application are divided into groups: the northern (St Petersburg and Kaliningrad) group, central (Moscow and Podolsk in the Moscow Region), Volga (Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Kazan, Saransk, Samara and Volgograd), southern (Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar and Sochi) and Urals (Yekaterinburg). None of the above-mentioned cities (apart from Moscow) have stadiums and transport and tourist infrastructure which conform to FIFA standards and the world championship level. It would be difficult to cite even an approximate amount of investment needed for the FWC preparations. It is clear, however, that the 10 billion roubles allocated by the government for football development through 2015 will not be nearly enough.
Not all the cities included in the application have football clubs playing in the Russian Premier League or even the first division. Yet, RFU sees no problem with this. Vitaly Mutko, RFU's head, has promised that there will be a new football team in Sochi in 2013 to play in the Premier League.
Nikolai Ivashov