By David Gold
April 17 – Jürgen Müller, FIFA’s head of the 2014, 2018 and 2022 World Cups, has expressed his satisfaction at what he described as “full commitment from all candidate host cities visited so far” during an inspection tour of Russia.
Müller (pictured left with Mayor of Rostov-on-Don Mikhail Chernyshev) has been part of the FIFA delegation that has joined its counterparts from Russia 2018 on a tour around the 13 prospective host cities for the competition.
The tour began last week in the south of Russia, in Krasnodar, before moving onto Rostov-on-Don with the Sochi leg of the trip postponed because of poor weather.
The three locations form the southern cluster of host cities, with the delegation set to move to the north next, followed by a trip to St Petersburg at the end of April.
Sochi is highly likely to be awarded the right to host matches, while Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don also have a good chance of staging games.
Moscow, St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg are also all set to host matches during the tournament.
The other cities in the running are Kazan, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Samara, Saransk and Volgograd.
“The objectives of these visits are to get a first hand picture on the proposed venues and this objective was met on this first stage of the candidate host city inspection tour,” Müller said.
“The visits were well organised and we have seen a full commitment from all candidate host cities visited so far.
“The host city selection process is a major milestone on the way to the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
“We look forward to visit the remaining other candidate venues.”
The host city selection tour continues through May and ends on June 22, following which an evaluation report will be put together to help the selection process.
The final decision will be made by FIFA in September, a year earlier than previously planned to help Russia make a fast start to their 2018 preparations.
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