MOSCOW, July 31. /ITAR-TASS/. The next World Cup, which will be hosted by Russia in 2018, will be organized at the highest level possible as the promoters of the event will take into account the experience gained at the recent football world championship in Brazil. Head of the Russian Football Premier League, Sergei Pryadkin, said this on Thursday.

Russia’s task group from the “Russia-2018” organizing committee stayed in Brazil for the whole duration of the 2014 World Cup, which ran in the Latin American country between June 12 and July 13.

“Yes, there were some setbacks in the organization of the championship [in Brazil],” Sergei Pryadkin told journalists on Thursday but did not specify the nature of mentioned setbacks.

“However, as far as I know, the task group gained the necessary knowledge and I am positive that the next World Cup, which Russia hosts, will be organized at the highest level possible,” he said. “The Olympics in Sochi can prove this.”

The country won the bid to host the 2018 World Cup over three years ago in a tight race against the joint bid from England, Portugal and Spain and the joint bid on behalf of Belgium and the Netherlands.

Shortly before Brazil’s fabulous city of Rio de Janeiro dropped the curtains on the 2014 World Cup with the final Germany-Argentina clash on July 13, the baton of the global football tournament’s hosting nations was passed on to Russia.

The symbolic hand-over ceremony of the right to host the World Cup tournament was held at the iconic over 74,700-seat capacity Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro and was attended by FIFA President Sepp Blatter, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Blatter said earlier that he intended to pay a visit to Russia in September to monitor the preparation work for the championship in 2018.

Following an official ceremony held in September 2012 and attended by Blatter, Russia eventually selected 11 out of the earlier proposed 13 cities, excluding Krasnodar and Yaroslavl. The final list of the 2018 World Cup host cities includes Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.