May 6 – The political and financial chaos within the Russian Football Union (RFU) has triggered a no-confidence in current president Nikolay Tolstykh at a meeting of the RFU’s executive committee. Already there are calls for Russia’s sports minister Vitaly Mutko, to take over the reins.
May 4 – The Uralmash stadium in Yekaterinberg, scheduled to be a training base for the 2018 World Cup is, according to local reports, 80% complete and once landscaping is complete will open this summer.
By Paul Nicholson
May 1 – The soft face of news from Russia on World Cup 2018 preparations, met the harder of face football’s geo-politics this week. As the 2018 organisers launched a competition to create the mascot for the 2018 World Cup, the organisers were pushed into defending the possibility of housing teams in 2018 in the volatile North Caucasus regions, including Chechnya.
April 28 – Saransk, in the Mordovia region of Russia, has announced details of its post-World Cup 2018 legacy programme saying that the 792-room ‘Tavia’ hotel complex will be converted to affordable family apartments after the tournament.
By Paul Nicholson
April 24 – Russia’s stadium preparations for the 2018 World Cup are on schedule in terms of delivery dates, but off-schedule in terms of cost. An issue that is forcing the organisers to continually re-evaluate, but which they have repeatedly said will not derail the overall plan.
By David Owen at the SportAccord Convention World Sport & Business Summit in Sochi
April 21 – Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s Sports Minister, has hinted at an impending clampdown on the number of foreign players permitted to be fielded by Russian clubs, while indicating that the country’s President harbours doubts over how the national team will perform at the 2018 World Cup.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 21 – Sepp Blatter has a habit of deliberately saying the appropriate thing depending on his hosts at the time. So it was no surprise that the FIFA president sweet-talked Russian president Vladimir Putin when he visited Sochi for SportAccord.
By David Owen at the SportAccord Convention in Sochi
April 21 – A highly cultured venue has been chosen for the FIFA banquet coinciding with the Preliminary Draw for the 2018 World Cup. Russia 2018 chief executive Alexey Sorokin has told Insideworldfootball that the banquet is to be held at the Russian museum of fine arts in St Petersburg. The draw itself – the first official event of the World Cup – has been scheduled for this coming July 25 at the restored 17th century Konstantinovsky Palace.
April 14 – World Cup legacy is championed as an important ingredient of hosting the world’s biggest sporting event and generally the build-up to the event generates enthusiasm and excitement for the game – it is a catalyst for the growth of the game in the country. So the news that Rotor Volgograd, one of Russia leading clubs in the 1990s has gone bust, is a an unfortunate counter to the legacy proposition.
By Mark Baber
April 8 – Despite encouraging signs of resilience in the economy, Russia looks poised to cut back on the number of hotels built specifically for the 2018 World Cup, following the publication of a consultation document by the Sports Ministry.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 2 – A group of US senators is back on the attack over Russia’s staging of the 2018 World Cup and have written to FIFA urging it to consider stripping the country as hosts because of the occupation of Crimea.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 17 – Ukraine’s government is back on the offensive over a potential boycott of the 2018 World Cup in Russia with organisers countering that such a move would be doomed to failure.
By Paul Nicholson
March 16 – The problem of racism in Russian football is getting the full attention of FIFA with CONCACAF president Jeffrey Webb (pictured), who heads FIFA’s anti-racism and discrimination task force, saying that the problem needs to be tackled from the “dressing room out”.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 4 – One of Russia’s leading football officials has admitted the country must eliminate the “virus” of racism before the 2018 World Cup. With so much focus on Qatar 2022, Russian organisers have managed to escape the same level of scrutiny but comments by FIFA president Sepp Blatter have forced them to concede that considerable effort needs to be made to tackle discrimination.
March 3 – Russia’s moves to reduce construction costs as they prepare for the 2018 World Cup in the face of a collapse of the ruble against the dollar, have resulted in more proposals for stadium cost-cutting and a reduction in the number of training sites for teams that qualify.