MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin has ensured that his government will be developing a comprehensive blueprint to utilize the infrastructure made for the FIFA World Cup 2018 to boost the sporting culture of the nation amongst all members of the public, the country’s news agency TASS reported.
“We will pay special attention to the development of the football heritage. Very soon, after the World Cup is over, we will gather together with all those who deals with physical culture and all those who was engaged in the construction and the operation of these sports facilities and the sports infrastructure as a whole and draw up a plan of using the sports, engineering and transport infrastructure that has been built to develop physical culture in the country,” Putin reportedly said at a meeting with world football legends on Friday.
In June, Putin had ordered the government to ensure jointly with the heads of regions hosting the 2018 FIFA World Cup matches, the use of World Cup’s heritage for organizing large-scale sporting competitions and events. It is also expected to be one of the 12 host nations for the Euro 2020 championships. Measures are being taken to use stadiums as training bases for Russian football teams.
Russia’s hospitality and organization of the World Cup has won appreciation from football fans, foreign state officials, politicians and experts globally.
According to FIFA’s official statistics, the number of fans at all stadiums during 56 out 64 total matches played at the 2018 World Cup (48 matches in the group stage and eight matches in Last 16) came to 2.58 million people, which carries an average of 46,010 at each match.
The country selected 11 host cities to be the venues, namely Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.
