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Thursday March 28, 2024

Russia scrambles to save face with Confed Cup looming

By AFP
May 24, 2017

MOSCOW: The new World Cup stadium in Saint Petersburg was meant to boast a state-of-the-art pitch and be a showcase for Vladimir Putin´s Russia when it hosts the 2018 football bonanza.

Instead the $800 million venue, which took a decade to build, has caused more embarrassment than pride as Russian authorities scramble to salvage its pitch less than a month before it hosts the opening match of the Confederations Cup, a World Cup warm-up tournament.

Uprooted chunks of turf and bald spots on the playing surface in the first match last month at the 68,000-seat arena -- a 2-0 win by home team Zenit St Petersburg over Ural Yekaterinburg -- sparked concern that the stadium would be unsuitable for Russian Premier League matches, let alone the 2018 World Cup.

While officials played down the situation, the stadium received wide-ranging criticism including from Zenit manager Mircea Lucescu.

Now, less than a month before Russia face New Zealand at the venue on June 17, workers have begun replacing the turf in a desperate battle against time.

It is the latest chapter in a decade-long saga of spiralling bills, missed deadlines and scandal surrounding the World Cup in Russia.

"We were supposed to receive a fairytale stadium, the best in the world, in ideal condition," opposition firebrand and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny said in an April video post.

"It was one of Russia´s most important construction projects, and money was stolen nonetheless."

Last year the former deputy governor of Saint Petersburg, Marat Oganesyan, was arrested over a fraud scheme with a firm that was supposed to provide the stadium with a video scoreboard.