Challenges lie ahead for Russian World Cup organisers

Organisers of the Russia 2018 World Cup passed their first significant landmark this weekend with the announcement of the 11 host cities for the tournament. Yaroslavl and Krasnodar were the two cities missing out, with Moscow, St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, Volgograd, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaliningrad and Kazan awarded hosting rights.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter and Secretary General Jérôme Valcke, the man ultimately responsible for the World Cup’s success, have both had only good things to say about Russia so far. But having dealt with the problems they have experienced with Brazil’s World Cup in 2014, it probably would not have taken too much to please FIFA.

Blatter said at the weekend that Russia is a year ahead of schedule, but now the real work begins. As Vitaly Mutko, chairman of the Russia 2018 organising committee and FIFA executive committee member, put it, not a single city is ready, even Moscow.

Each of the 12 stadiums being built has to be constructed anew or renovated, while there are significant infrastructural upgrades required in each host city, particularly relating to their airports. So far the Russian organisers have wasted little time - FIFA was meant to announce the host cities in 2013, but this was brought forward by a year as Russia was keen to get preparations underway quickly.

The World Cup law will be passed by the end of the year, yet Brazil only passed theirs a few months ago. And construction of a number of stadiums is already underway, and in some cases near completion. Despite all of this good work, there are three key questions which remain open and could yet spell problems. Legacy, transport and racism.

The risk of ‘white elephants’
‘White elephants’ are a risk for any host nation of a major sports event – the prospect of expensively constructed venues seeing little or no use afterwards.

There are few fears over new stadiums being built by Spartak Moscow, Rubin Kazan and Zenit St Petersburg. Conversely, there is a question mark over the new Fisht stadium in Sochi, Russia’s only sub tropical city. It will stage World Cup games, but was meant to be taken over by Zhemchuzhina, the local football team, after 2018 – only they went bankrupt last year.

There are cities, such as Volgograd, Yekaterinburg and Kaliningrad, with just one professional team. Given that Premier League Dynamo Moscow have already said they will reduce the size of their stadium from 45,000 because they missed out on staging World Cup games on the grounds that they do not need that many seats, how lower league teams plan to make adequate use of larger venues is open to question.

Even champions Zenit St Petersburg’s average attendances are in the region of 20,000. Some have plans, for example Nizhny Novgorod hope to hold more than 100 events a year at their new ground, but doubts will persist until ideas become reality. It also raises questions about FIFA’s stadium requirements in countries whose football teams can never attract that many fans. That led to over capacity of several venues in South Africa from the last World Cup – and Russia may face a similar problem.

Vast distances between venues
How Russia 2018 intends to transport hundreds of thousands of visitors around the country is another issue literally up in the air. Only a handful of journeys between host cities take less than five hours by train, with some venues over 3,000 kilometres apart. Travelling from Sochi to Kaliningrad alone would take two days by car or by train – and there are plenty of trips between cities which would take over a day unless flying. And in all there are several pairs of host cities without direct flights running between them.

The idea is to cluster venues so that national sides play group matches in relatively closer areas, and Russia 2018 chief executive Alexey Sorokin told me earlier this year that they would be doing all they could to prevent teams travelling across the country, but the actual players comprise a relatively small number of those who will be trekking around Russia. This issue is put into sharp focus by the fact that transport was the Achilles’ heel highlighted in an otherwise positive report by FIFA during the bidding process for the World Cup back in 2010.

“The country’s vastness and geographic location…imply a dependence on air travel, potentially causing domestic and international transfer challenges in view of the lack of alternative means of long distance transport,” FIFA had noted, but they added that even with the necessary upgrades some cities may not meet requirements.

Airlines also have much to do. Russia was the most dangerous country in the world in which to fly last year. In 2010, a plane which crashed at a Moscow airport had carried the Belgian national team just weeks earlier. This is a legacy of the aged and sub-standard Soviet passenger air fleet.

But Russia 2018 is meant to project an image of a modern country, far removed from the Cold War years. This issue is even more critical given that the air network and international connections was the only ‘high risk’ area FIFA noted in 2010. Since then, more questions have been raised as the plans to construct a high speed rail network, a grandiose project aimed at reducing journey times dramatically, are at risk.

According to reports in the Russian media, the federal government has not budgeted for the upgrade to the rail network over the next three years. Russian Railways have confirmed that they had received no official answer to their calculations for the network, and effectively turned around and posed the pertinent question ‘and have you got any better ideas?’

Problems with racism
The other well documented major challenge Russia face is more nuanced – racism. When a player, Emmanuel Emenike, is fined for gesturing at fans who racially abused him, whilst the club whose supporters taunted him are not even punished, there is a significant problem. It is particularly troubling that police were unable to do anything about a fan throwing a banana at Roberto Carlos during a Russian Premier League game in Samara last year.

The guilty individual claimed there was no racist motive – that he just happened to have the banana in his hand at the time. A turning point in the battle against racism could be the recent high profile signings of Brazilian forward Hulk and Belgian midfielder Axel Witsel for Zenit St Petersburg.

The club’s former coach Dick Advocaat once said he was prevented from signing black players because the fans would not accept them. Now they have two. Yet the recently found explosive device found near Zenit’s base, with a picture of Hulk next to it, symbolises the challenge ahead.

Russian Premier League chief Sergei Cheban is keen to beat racism and has brought in measures, such as CCTV footage requirements for clubs, to that end. Spartak Moscow and Anzhi Makhachkala are among those joining the fight. Russia is not ignoring the issue, but there is much work to do to make words meet actions.

The budget has doubled
The scale of the work means Russia will be spending vast sums in the years ahead, and they will have to avoid the same pitfalls as their neighbours Ukraine endured when they staged this summer’s European Championships. They were beset by corruption, not to mention overspending.

Although there are so far no concrete allegations of the former after Russia won the World Cup, the manner in which the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments was carried out was highly dubious.

Aside from the significant spending of the winning bids, the expulsion of two members of the FIFA executive committee after an English newspaper found them willing to take bribes illustrated the inherent flaws in the process.

The chairman of the investigatory chamber of FIFA’s Ethics Committee Michael J. Garcia is now to scrutinise the bidding amid the numerous allegations of corruption during the process. Publicly World Cup organisers are relaxed about the prospect of such an investigation. But then, they would be.

Eyes will be on Russia even more after the revelation this weekend that the budget for the tournament has doubled to €15 billion. Russia may have made rapid progress so far, but almost two years on from Zurich and that historic announcement for Russian football, the most critical questions remain unanswered.