April 16 – Russian Minister of Sport Vitaly Mutko, speaking at a meeting of the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy, outlined the progress of the stadium build for the FIFA World Cup 2018.
The Russian World Cup 2018 will be held at 12 stadiums in 11 cities – in Moscow, Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi and Yekaterinburg. The draw for the qualifying matches for the World Cup will be held June 25, 2015 in St. Petersburg.
Mutko said the Stadium “Zenit-Arena” in St. Petersburg will be ready by May 2016. The Kazan stadium will also be ready in May. It will be converted into a 50-metre swimming pool for the FINA World Championships in 2015 before the pool is dismantled and the stadium returned for football use.
Most ambitious of the building projects is in Kaliningrad, where the island will be the site of the stadium. Mutko said there had been problems associated with the the moorland topography of the island. “But it is the centre of Kaliningrad, it is 10 meters from the tomb of Immanuel Kant, and we will definitely build, despite all the difficulties,” said Mutko.
In Saransk, Volgograd, the old stadium will be demolished replaced with a new stadium on the same site. The stadium in Yekaterinburg will be remodelled.
As regards cost of stadia, Mutko said that none should be more expensive that the Kazan stadium which will cost 15.2 billion rubles ($419 million).
Mutko also said that teams in the 2018 World Cup will be placed in cities in the ‘European’ part of Russia.
The Ministry of Sport published a new construction schedule which reports costs to be about 620 billion rubles ($17.1 billion), though it was noted that this may not be the final amount.
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