Dynamo Moscow’s planned new football stadium may be reduced in size by nearly a third after it was left off the list of World Cup 2018 host venues, the arena’s executive director told R-Sport on Sunday.
With Moscow’s vast Luzhniki stadium already confirmed to host the final of Russia’s first World Cup, Dynamo’s VTB Arena lost out to rivals Spartak Moscow’s planned new stadium in the race to be Moscow’s second stadium.
“We want to make the stadium in the Petrovsky Park [the VTB Arena] more comfortable and perhaps the capacity will be reduced,” the stadium’s executive director Andrei Peregudov said.
“The club doesn’t need 45,000 seats, 33,000 seats seems optimal to us.”
The decision to leave out the VTB Arena came “at the right time” to allow for changes to the design, he said.
The stadium was dropped because it will be finished later than the Spartak project and less likely to be able to host the Confederations Cup in 2017, a key warm-up event for the World Cup, Peregudov said.
FIFA selected 12 stadiums in 11 cities to host the World Cup, with the decision announced in a TV marathon Saturday.
Russia won the right to host the World Cup in 2010, seeing off a rival bid from England and two joint bids, one from Spain and Portugal, the other from Belgium and the Netherlands.
