(Reuters) — Russia’s preparations for the 2018 FIFA World Cup are in full swing as the country gets 11 cities ready to host the tournament in three years time.
The Local Organising Committee are currently showing journalists around the 11 World Cup cities to show how the work is going.
Construction is underway in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod city, about 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Moscow, where a gleaming new soccer stadium is under construction for the 2018 World Cup.
The Nizhny Novgorod Stadium, which will have a capacity of 45,000, is being built at a location with a view of where the Volga and Oka rivers meet and with the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral nearby. Organisers say a new metro station will also be built near the stadium.
Nizhny Novgorod region governor, Valery Shantsev, said he hoped the tournament would put the city on the international map.
“We hope that our delegations abroad at different meetings will no longer receive questions like ‘where exactly is Nizhny Novgorod?'” Shantsev told reporters on Friday (July 10).
“We will do everything so that all those that come here, both participants and supporters will be happy and satisfied, and will recall for a long time after the year of 2018 and most importantly Nizhny Novgorod,” he added.
On Wednesday (July 8), Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko said there was no threat of Russia being stripped of the World Cup due to the impending change of FIFA president or the FBI probe into alleged corruption at world soccer’s governing body.
The FBI is investigating widespread allegations of FIFA corruption going back more than two decades, while the Swiss authorities are probing the voting mechanism that saw Russia win the right to stage the next edition and Qatar the 2022 finals.
Russia has been a staunch ally of outgoing FIFA chief Sepp Blatter over the years and have supported him during his 17 years as president, and Mutko praised the 79-year-old Swiss.
Blatter said last month he was “laying down his mandate” just days after winning a fifth term and less than a week after police arrested seven FIFA officials in a dawn raid in Zurich.
FIFA’s executive committee meets on July 20 in Zurich to determine when an extraordinary congress will be held to elect a new president on a date between December and March next year.
