The idea of holding the tournament was discussed with representatives of diplomatic missions located in Rostov-on-Don at a special meeting in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Rostov Region. Among the participants were heads and representatives of consulates and trade missions of Armenia, Belarus, Hungary, Macedonia, Monaco, Abkhazia, France, and Spain.
"In order to popularize football, enhance the tourist attractiveness of Rostov-on-Don and draw attention to the city itself, it was decided to organize an international tournament among youth teams from its sister cities in May", the mayor stated at the meeting.
Rostov-on-Don is twinned with 13 cities. Among them are Volos (Greece), Dortmund and Gera (Germany), Le Mans (France), Glasgow (United Kingdom), Kajaani (Finland), Pleven (Bulgaria), Cheongju (South Korea), Yerevan (Armenia), Mobile (United States), Antalya (Turkey), Odessa (Ukraine), and Huangshan (China).
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Currently, Rostov-on-Don is considering establishing similar ties with the Belarusian capital, Minsk. This year, the city also intends to sign sister city agreements with Spain’s Seville and Indonesia’s Medan, the mayor added.
FIFA Visitors
Over 60,000 Egyptian nationals are expected to arrive in Russia for the forthcoming FIFA World Cup, Egyptian Ambassador to Russia Ihab Talaat Nasr told Sputnik Friday.
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"We expect that representatives of Egyptian media would be widely presented… The second group are fans, who would like to see the football matches firsthand at the stadiums. I cannot provide the exact figures, but we expect that it will be more than 50,000-60,000 people," Nasr said, adding that the Egyptian consular service was preparing for a large flow of applications, while the largest part of the trips would be organized via travel agencies.
The ambassador said that the issue of the Egyptian team's location has not been settled so far. FIFA proposed several options, and the final decision will be taken in the coming weeks, he added.
Russia will host FIFA World Cup for the first time in its history from June 14 to July 15, 2018. Games of the tournament will be held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, Yekaterinburg, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Volgograd and Samara.
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