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The world’s governing football body, FIFA has expressed its satisfaction with Russia’s preparations for hosting the 2018 World Cup after the last of 12 stadiums intended to host the championship’s matches was granted the commissioning permit earlier in the day.
“We are very satisfied with the level of effort and amount of work being done by the Russians,” FIFA’s press service said.
“The next weeks will be extremely intense for those who are on-site and challenges will certainly arise, but there is a clear commitment with a high-level delivery and that makes FIFA very confident that the World Cup in Russia will be a success,” the statement added.
General Director of the 2018 Local Organizing Committee (LOC) Alexei Sorokin said earlier he hoped that FIFA would be satisfied to learn that all of 2018 World Cup stadiums in Russia had been commissioned.
The Russian Sports Ministry announced earlier in the day that the stadium in Samara was granted the commissioning permit.
The stadium in Samara was the last one out of twelve football arenas, which will be the venues for the games of the much-anticipated global football tournament this summer, to receive the commissioning permit as the construction of the facility had been behind the initial schedule.
“This is the biggest arena (in Russia) built especially for the World Cup,” according to Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov said.
The stadium in the city of Samara, which was founded in 1586 and has a current population of 1.13 million, boasts a 45,000-seat capacity. Samara Arena is scheduled to host four group stage games, a match of the Last 16 stage and one of the quarterfinals.
The group stage matches to be played in Samara are: Costa Rica-Serbia on June 17, Denmark-Australia on June 21, Uruguay-Russia on June 25 and Senegal-Colombia on June 28.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup kicks off in 41 days with the opening match in the Russian capital of Moscow.
Russia selected 11 host cities to be the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.
