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Over 40,000 tickets sold for Russia-Peru football friendly in St. Petersburg

The match will be played on Wednesday night in Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg at the 67,800-seat capacity Gazprom Arena

ST. PETERSBURG, November 12. /TASS/. Over 40,000 tickets have been sold for a friendly football match between the national teams of Russia and Peru, the Russian Football Union (RFU) announced to TASS on Wednesday.

The match will be played on Wednesday night in Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg at the 67,800-seat capacity Gazprom Arena, with kick-off set for 8:00 p.m. Moscow time (5:00 p.m. GMT).

Peru has never played against Russia, but it did play three exhibitions against the Soviet Union in the early 70s. Two of the matches were held in the capital of Peru, Lima, in February 1970, with the first one ending in a scoreless draw and the second one 2-0 in favor of the USSR. The third match was played in the Soviet Union in April of 1972, when the Soviet team enjoyed a 2-0 win again.

This week on Saturday, the Russian football squad will play another friendly match against the national team of Chile in the Black Sea southern city of Sochi at the almost 45,000-seat capacity Fisht Stadium.

Russia’s football ban

The world’s governing football body, FIFA, announced on February 28, 2022, that the Russian national team and all professional clubs representing the country were barred from participating in FIFA tournaments.

In turn, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) made a similar decision regarding the Russian national football team’s participation in UEFA tournaments.

Both FIFA and UEFA cited Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine as grounds for their respective bans on Russian teams’ participation in competitions.