In “Field Of Nightmares? Russian World Cup Stadium Plagued By Problems” RFE/RL’s Aleksandr Gmyrin and Tony Wesolowsky reported on Friday that one of the stadiums Russia built and opened just months before the 2018 World Cup is now in serious trouble: it is sinking into the swamp where it was built. Gmyrin and Wesolowsky write that the stadium was:
in the national spotlight on September 9 when it played host to a Euro 2020 qualifier between Russia and Kazakhstan.
Instead of reveling in the 1–0 Russian victory, a columnist at one of the nation’s leading sports daily, Sport-Express, voiced shock at the state of the stadium, predicting the national team would never play there again and questioning whether the structure would collapse.
The photos in Dmitry Zelenov’s September 8 Sport-Express column (in Russian) show severe problems at the 35,000-seat stadium, with significant drainage issues in or near the stadium.
Zelenov’s column caused an uproar in Russia. Although the stadium, which cost about $300 million to build, hosted four 2018 World Cup group-stage matches in which a total of ten goals were scored, it now merely hosts FC Baltika, a second-tier Russian club that draws a few thousand fans per match. Russian authorities have arrested some directors and managers associated with the stadium construction, and have accused them deliberately using substandard sand in the foundation and then siphoning millions of construction-fund dollars into bank accounts in Cyprus. In June, the Russian environmentalist Aleksandra Korolyova reported in “World Cup on a Swamp” that sand mafia probably supplied much of the sand — they create illegal sand pits, extract some sand, and then move on when authorities close them down. (For more on the sand mafia, please see Vince Beiser’s “The Deadly Global War for Sand”, published in WIRED in 2015.)
Although Kaliningrad Stadium is perhaps the worst-off of stadiums Russia built for the 2018 World Cup, similar problems exist elsewhere. A June survey of the stadiums published in the Moscow Times, entitled “The State of Russian Stadiums, a Year After the World Cup”, found that most of the venues are losing money and many are poorly maintained. For example, soon after the World Cup was over, the new arena in Volgograd was hit by rains that seriously damaged it, cracking the foundations and “giving the venue a shattered look”. The Russian central government helped to finance these stadiums’ construction, but local governments are responsible for maintenance and many of them are treating the stadiums as white elephants and are forgoing maintenance.
If you’ll recall, last year Donald Trump tweeted “congratulations to President Putin and Russia for putting on a truly great World Cup Tournament — one of the best ever!” When meeting Putin in Helsinki in July 2018, Trump congratulated Putin again in person, calling Russia’s hosting of the World Cup “beautifully done”.
