Anticipation grows in Russia, three years ahead of home World Cup

A general view of a construction site of the new football stadium in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia.

DPA/Moscow Behind a larger than life statue of Lenin at a bend in the Moskva River, the giant Luzhniki Stadium is being renovated for the 2018 World Cup in Russia - and the country is already going crazy for football, three years before the event. “There are 35 million Russians who would already like to buy a ticket,” Anatoly Pakhomov, mayor of Sochi, said. The World Cup is “breaking through the hearts and mentality of men,” he added. Sochi is one of the 11 host cities chosen for the tournament which is being eagerly anticipated in Russia  - more so than in Germany 2006 and South Africa 2010 at a similar point in time before the first ball is kicked. On Tuesday the Russian Football Union parted company with coach Fabio Capello with the team facing the embarrassing possibility of missing Euro 2016 in France. But it is not only on the field that work has to be done. The Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow is currently a building site with huge steel beams lying across the future pitch. The cost of rebuilding that ground, which will host the opening ceremony and final, is now over 660 million euros (726 million dollars). But it is the most prestigious symbol in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s World Cup, an event which can shine brightly in contrast to political complaints about his Russia and interference in neighbouring Ukraine. Other politicians are happy to use the World Cup to promote local interests. “Never again do I want to be asked abroad, ‘Where is Nizhny Novgorod actually?’,” Valery Shantsev, governor of the region 400 kilometres east of Moscow, with some 3.3 million inhabitants, said. The city will hope the World Cup, held June 14-July 15, can give it an international boost. But the stadium which it will use to host games has not yet been built and there is then the issue of what will happen to it after the tournament. Nizhny Novgorod may boast a strong basketball team but in football they are less proficient - they are in the Russian second division and the question of how to regularly fill a 45,000-capacity ground is being largely ignored. That is not a problem shared by Vladimir Leonov, minister of youth and sport in the Tatarstan, home to the city of Kazan. Rubin Kazan are an established team, with a victory over Barcelona in the history books, and the city is already a sports hub - it will host the world aquatics championships later this month. “I cried with joy when we were named a host for 2018,” Leonov said.  On July 24, the day before the qualifying draw is made for the tournament in St Petersburg, Kazan is expected to be confirmed as a venue not only for group games but a quarter-final as well.