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FIFA to allocate over $60 million for 2018 World Cup heritage program in Russia

The sum will be channeled for the support of the development of youth and women football and the 2018 World Cup infrastructure maintenance, according to Arkady Dvorkovich

© Mikhail Tereshchenko/TASS

MOSCOW, February 27. /TASS/. The world’s governing football body, FIFA, is set to allocate at least $60 million for the 2018 World Cup heritage program in Russia, Arkady Dvorkovich, the chairman of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) Russia-2018, said on Wednesday.

The Monitoring Council of the Russia-2018 LOC gathered for its last session in Moscow on Wednesday.

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Russia spent some $10.6 billion to organize 2018 FIFA World Cup

"FIFA is set to allocate at least $60 million for the heritage program," Dvorkovich told journalists after the session. "The sum will be channeled for the support of the development of youth and women football and the [2018 World Cup] infrastructure maintenance."

"The heritage program is under discussions with the Russian Sports Ministry, the RFU [Russian Football Union] and FIFA," Dvorkovich said.

FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura, who attended the session in Moscow as well, said the world’s football body was set to establish a 2018 World Cup heritage fund. Speaking to journalists she said that Russia organized an outstanding World Cup and the next step is to evaluate to exact scale of the tournament in Russia.

Last summer Russia hosted its first-ever FIFA World Cup, which kicked off in Moscow with a remarkable opening show at Luzhniki Stadium on the evening of June 14 and ended with a spectacular final match, played also at the Luzhniki Stadium, where France confidently defeated Croatia 4-2 to win the much-coveted World Cup Trophy.

Russia selected 11 host cities as the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they were Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.

FIFA President Infantino said after the world championship that Russia staged "the best World Cup ever." According to the Russian Federal Agency for Tourism, some 2.9 million foreign visitors arrived in Russia last summer for the FIFA World Cup.

In late December, FIFA announced in its statement that the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia set a new record of audience in the history of world football championships as over half of the world’s population watched matches on TV at home, out of home or on digital platforms.

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