Russia eager to host world football championships.
Today in Zurich, a Russian delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov will make a bid to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022. Officials say Russia has a good chance of securing the FIFA World Cup, though it is true that its competitors have good stadiums and experience with large competitions. But, hosting the championships would put Russia on the map for football.
The Sochi Olympics in Russia may be followed by other globally significant competitions – the World Cup either in 2018 or 2022. On December 2, FIFA will name both of the sites, and each country bidding can vie for both, RBC Daily was told by the Russian bidding committee led by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov. Today, he will hand Russia's 1,100-page bid book to FIFA President Joseph Blatter.
The government considered the issue a year ago, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed government guarantees last month. Britain, Australia, the United States, Portugal together with Spain, and Belgium with the Netherlands will compete with Russia for the right to hold the championships. Separately, Japan, Qatar and South Korea will bid for the 2022 World Cup.
"They already have stadiums and experience with large competitions. We, on the other hand, have an ambitious project which may give a boost to the popularity of football in our country," Shuvalov said yesterday. "Everything will be built from scratch. Many call this our greatest setback, but we look at it as an advantage."
Whether or not Russia ends up hosting the tournament, it will build six large world-class stadiums, Shuvalov promised. When the committee explained to RBC Daily which stadiums the prime minister meant, it became clear why they would be built. Plans to construct them were drawn up long ago, but there was no state programme to support them. Zenit St Petersburg is having a Gazprom-Arena stadium built for it, while Spartak Moscow will have a stadium at Tushino. In Sochi, a stadium will be built for the opening of the Winter Olympic Games.
The World Cup will require many more arenas as championship games are planned for 13 cities – from Kaliningrad and Yekaterinburg to St. Petersburg and Sochi.
"Actually, it is enough to have eight cities for the championships," says Dmitry Navosha, head of the sports.ru project. "It is another issue that outside of Moscow and St Petersburg the cities lack hotels meeting FIFA standards. This is now a serious problem for Ukraine, which is preparing for the European championships. And if they are built after spending so much money, then why, following the world championships, will provincial Saransk, for example, need three five-star hotels and a dozen three-star hotels?"
Navosha believes that Russia's World Cup bid is an attempt to repeat the "costly Sochi undertaking" and to launch another "great-power project." But the likelihood of winning is lower this time: World Cups are more popular than Winter Olympics with spectators, and they are far costlier and more difficult to organise.
Last year, Vladimir Putin received Mr Blatter in the Government House, addressing him as a "dear friend," while the latter replied that he was sympathetic to the Russian bid. And, as the government assures, he was not kidding. "The United Kingdom can organise world championships at a moment's notice, but that would not be a challenge to FIFA," says Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko. "In this sense, we consider Blatter to be our supporter because he wants world championships to leave a great legacy."
Vyacheslav Leonov