3 Russian cities bid to host World Cup semis

Three Russian cities  Yekaterinburg, Moscow and Saint Petersburg  are bidding to host the 2018 World Cup semi-finals, the country sports minister Vitaly Mutko said Tuesday. Mutko, who also heads the World Cup organising committee, said that 13 cities and 15 stadiums have expressed their interest in hosting matches for the world’s biggest football extravaganza. Moscow represents the central cluster of the event’s probable host cities with the northern cluster consisting of Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Yaroslavl, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Volgograd and Saransk were included in the Volga river cluster, while Sochi, Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar formed the southern cluster. Ural mountains region’s city Yekaterinburg is also bidding to host matches. “I’m glad to announce that we initiated the creation of the legislative base which is required for holding the World Cup in Russia,” Mutko told a news conference that followed the first joint meeting of FIFA and WC organisers.