Renovation work at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, one of the venues for football’s Fifa World Cup in 2018, will be completed on time, according to a senior tournament official.
The stadium is scheduled to stage the opening game, a semi-final and the final of the World Cup, and renovation work has been ongoing since 2013 to bring the venue up to the necessary standard. Once finished, the stadium will have a capacity of more than 81,000.
Redevelopment work currently being carried out includes the removal of the athletics track and the moving of stands closer to the pitch. Three more tiers will also be added to the stadium.
Luzhniki Stadium was built in 1957 and served as a host venue for the summer Olympic Games in 1980. Fifa notes on its website that one of the key aspects of the redevelopment project is preserving its “historical façade”.
All seats at the stadium are due to be permanently mounted in February, and officials remain confident the project will be delivered on time.
“We have recently been at the Luzhniki Stadium, the reconstruction work is still underway but is about to be completed,” Vadim Tyulpanov, head of the Russian parliament upper house’s commission on the organisation of the tournament, said, according to Russian news agency Tass. “I am sure that we will cope with the set task and will commission the facility on schedule.”
Luzhniki Stadium is one of two Moscow-based World Cup venues, along with Spartak Stadium.
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