By Paul Nicholson
January 13 – Russia’s Cabinet of Ministers announced yesterday that the country will spend about $34 million on developing training grounds for the 2018 football World Cup.
The 2018 World Cup cost is already estimated at $20 billion – the sum was revised upwards middle of last year, though Russian officials have always maintained that this was not completely unexpected and the budget could cope with the revision. This cost is spread across infrastructure and stadiums in the 11 host cities.
The newly announced plans are for the construction and renovation of 113 training facilities, 48 of which are listed as “pre-match training grounds” and the other 65 of which are “grounds at team base camps”, reports R-Sport.
So far two of the venues are ready – the Kazan Arena and Sochi Olympic Fisht Stadium (pictured) are yet to stage their first official football matches.
The centrepiece of the 2018 World Cup will be the rebuilt Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow which will host the opening match, a semi-final and the final. The stadium was closed after the World Athletics Championships at the end of last year to enable the work to begin on the rebuild.
A second Moscow stadium is also being built. Assuming there are no delays, Spartak Moscow will get a 45,000-seat arena in July, ready for the 2014-15 season.
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