By Paul Nicholson
August 20 – Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has turned down a FIFA proposal to reduce the number of stadiums and cities that will host the 2018 World Cup. FIFA president Sepp Blatter met with Russian president Vladimir Putin as well as Mutko in Sochi last weekend and suggested a possible reduction.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 18 – The head of Russia’s 2018 World Cup organising committee has broken his silence over calls in some quarters for the country to be stripped of host status as a result of the widely condemned military and political intervention in Ukraine.
August 18 – A survey by the Russian Foundation of Public Opinion found that the overwhelming majority of Russians believe that holding the 2018 World Cup in Russia will promote interest in sport and a healthy lifestyle.
August 15 – FIFA has to deal with scores of complaints on an almost daily basis but few are surely more bizarre than the revelation that a Colombian lawyer is suing world football’s governing body for €1 billion over “moral damages” caused by refereeing at the World Cup.
August 14 – Russia’s EMERCOM (The Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters), has begun preparations for the 2018 World Cup and says it will draw on the experiences of the Brazil World Cup, the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2013 Kazan University Olympiade in its planning.
August 13 – Details of Russia’s stadium build for the 2018 World Cup are starting to be released. The Saransk Arena has now had official planning approval while August will see completion of the Spartak Moscow stadium.
By Paul Nicholson
August 12 – Russia’s prime minister Dmitry Medvedev has called for a close monitoring of the costs of building the infrastructure for the 2018 World Cup, following the financial plan that already exists. He also insisted that the preparations should be made to the highest standards and that the experience of hosting a successful Olympics has shown the way in this regard.
August 7- Indications that Volgograd will retain host status for the Russia 2018 World Cup could not have been stronger with the announcement that the Zenit sports complex in the city will receive 56 million rubles ($1.5 million) for reconstruction enabling it to become one of the training centres for the tournament.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 6 – In a major triumph for his employers who have long protested his innocence, Ray Whelan, the British director of FIFA’s World Cup marketing affiliate Match who has been at the centre of a ticket tout investigation in Brazil, has been freed from Rio’s notorious Bangu prison on bail.
By Paul Nicholson
August 5 – Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has reacted quickly to comments coming from Russian construction company Stroitransgaz, owned by Gennadiy Timchenko, which said that the company would pull out of the build of the stadiums in Volgograd and in Nizhniy Novgorod if the government did not increase the budget available.
August 5 – The Ghanaian fans who were seeking asylum in Brazil after the world cup have been granted an initial one-year stay in the country.
August 4 – Moscow’s regional governor Andrei Vorobyov has confirmed that 12 training sites will be upgraded for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
By Paul Nicholson
August 1 – Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has said that the 2018 World Cup will be played in 12 stadiums across 11 cities, and that there is no need to reduce the number of venues.
By Andrew Warshaw
August 1 – Former US presidential candidate John McCain has added his voice to calls for Russia to be stripped of the 2018 World Cup finals because of the Malaysian Airlines disaster and Russian support for separatists in the east of Ukraine.
By Andrew Warshaw
July 31 – Organisers of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar have been quick to respond to the latest wave of criticism over the mistreatment of construction workers saying they are “actively looking into” the latest reports and are “heavily dismayed” at some of the claims.