October 12 – Russia has officially named the 12 stadia in the 11 cities that will host the 2018 World Cup and the FIFA Confederations Cup 2017 – and eight of them are named after the cities in which they will be held.
The four stadia that will not be named after their cities are the two in Moscow; the Mordovia Arena, in Saransk, is named after the Republic of Mordovia; and The Fisht stadium in Sochi, named in honour of the mountain of the same name in the Caucasus – the arena’s silhouette resembles the mountain and, in the Adygeyan language, Fisht means white or grey head.
The Moscow stadiums are the iconic Luzhniki stadium – which will host the opening match, a semi-final and the final – and the Spartak Stadium, named after the famous Spartak Moscow club which plays there.
The Luzhniki, named after the district it is located in and which is currently being renovated, was last week the scene of a fire with smoke seen billowing out the top of the stadium.
The fire was reportedly caused by construction waste setting alight and has been extinguished with no casualties have been reported. Russia’s Sports Minister Vitaliy Mutko told Russian media that the stadium itself wasn’t damaged by the fire.
The official names of the stadiums for the 2018 FIFA World Cup are:
∙ Ekaterinburg Arena – Ekaterinburg
∙ Fisht Stadium – Sochi
∙ Kazan Arena – Kazan
∙ Kaliningrad Stadium – Kaliningrad
∙ Luzhniki Stadium; Spartak Stadium – Moscow
∙ Mordovia Arena – Saransk
∙ Nizhny Novgorod Stadium – Nizhny Novgorod
∙ Rostov Arena – Rostov-on-Don
∙ Samara Arena – Samara
∙ Saint Petersburg Stadium – Saint Petersburg
∙ Volgograd Arena – Volgograd
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