Moscow, Dec 21 (IANS) Moscow's Luzhniki stadium, under-reconstruction, will be commissioned on time, a senior official in charge of the 2018 football World Cups organisation in Russia said on Wednesday.
"We have recently been at the Luzhniki stadium, the reconstruction work is still underway but is about to be completed," said Vadim Tyulpanov, the head of the Russian parliament upper house's interim commission on the organisation of the 2018 World Cup, reports Tass.
"I am sure that we will cope with the set task and will commission the facility on schedule. We have also paid a visit to the (recently-opened) CSKA football stadium in Moscow," Tyulpanov said. "It can be used as a training camp for the Russian national team (during the 2018 World Cup)."
Moscow offers two stadiums as venues for the global football championship. The Luzhniki Arena, which is scheduled to host the opening match, one of the semi-finals and the final match of the World Cup.
Refurbishment on the Luzhniki Arena started in 2013 and once the work will have been completed, the stadium will extend spectator capacity to over 81,000 seats.
This is the second grand reconstruction of the stadium, which was initially built in 1957. The first major repair works on the stadium took place in the run-up to the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow.
Following the current reconstruction efforts, the athletics tracks inside the stadium will be removed, the spectators' stand will be rectangular in form and moved closer to the pitch, while the number of tiers will be increased to 16 from the previous 13.
Russia won the bid to host the 2018 World Cup in 2010 and the country selected 11 host cities to be the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.
The matches of the World Cup will be held between June 14 and July 15 at 12 stadiums located in the 11 mentioned above cities across Russia. Two of the stadiums are located in the Russian capital.
