By Paul Nicholson
June 9 – With FIFA meeting Russia 2018 World Cup organisers in Samara early this week to discuss progress, on Thursday in Moscow clubs, host cities and suppliers and builders of the 2018 infrastructure will be meeting at the World Football Forum conference to share information and discuss the challenges they are facing.
High on the agenda is a panel looking at transport infrastructure planning and how the World Cup is being used to as the catalyst for public transport development in a vast country with several different time zones separating the host cities. The panel will include Nikolay Nikitenko, director of transport for the 2018 local organising committee and Alexei Bakirei, the director of automobile and municipal passenger transport policy a the Russian Ministry of Transport.
Planning and preparation is generally gathering pace with the Russians having now provided FIFA with a list 66 bases in 31 cities where national teams can be accommodated during the finals.
“We have provided FIFA with 66 bases for training – in 11 host cities and in 20 towns where no matches will be held,” said Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko.
FIFA requirements are for the host country tp provide the teams with at least 64 bases to choose from. Mutko said in April that FIFA had approved 50 bases from the list provided by the organising committee.
The World Cup will be played in 12 stadiums in 11 cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Sochi and Rostov-on-Don.
Mutko also reported that the reconstruction of the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow is on target. “There are no questions about Luzhniki, the renovation is proceeding ahead of schedule,” he said.
The Luzhniki stadium will host the opening ceremony and match, as well as World Cup Final. Now likely to open in 2017, the arena will have a capacity of nearly 80,000.
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