Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium likely to become Russian football’s hub after 2018 World Cup

MOSCOW, October 19. /TASS/. The legendary Luzhniki stadium in the Russian capital of Moscow is likely to be turned into the main training camp for the national football team after the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said on Wednesday. "We have reached an agreement with Moscow’s City Hall about the training camp in Luzhniki," said Mutko, who is also the president of the Russian Football Union (RFU). "The work on this issue will be finalized after the World Cup." "It is also possible that the RFU headquarters will be relocated there as well since we already have such a project under discussion," he said. "It would be great, if Luzhniki became the center of (Russian) football." Moscow offers two stadiums as venues for the global football championship, which will be held in less than two years, and they are the recently-built Otkritie-Arena, which opened on September 5, 2014, and Moscow’s famous Luzhniki Arena, which is intended to host the opening match, one of the semifinals and the final match of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Refurbishment on the Luzhniki Arena was launched in 2013 and once the work will have been completed, the stadium will extend spectator capacity to over 81,000 seats. This is the second grand reconstruction of the stadium, which was initially built in 1957. The first major repair works on the stadium took place in the run-up to the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow. Following the current reconstruction efforts, the athletics tracks inside the stadium will be removed, the spectators’ stand will be rectangular in form and moved closer to the pitch, while the number of tiers will be increased to 16 from the previous 13. According to the FIFA.com website, one of the main aspects of the reconstruction project is to preserve the historical facade of the stadium, which since 1956 has hosted "a multitude of major sporting and cultural events, including the 1980 Summer Olympics, world championships in ice hockey, athletics and rugby and concerts featuring some of the world's greatest musical performers." The Luzhniki Arena’s principal affinity, however, was with football since over 3,000 matches have been played there over the years. Read more