ST. PETERSBURG, September 16. /ITAR-TASS/. An idea to form a core team for the Russian national squad that would be performing in the Russian regular championship before the 2018 World Cup is a “beautiful, but utopian idea,” Fabio Capello, the head coach of the Russian football team, said on Tuesday.

Anatoly Vorobyov, the secretary general of the Russian Football Union (RFU), earlier said that in order to show successful results at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the country could form a core team that would compete with Russian football clubs at the domestic championship and might be possibly named “Russia-2018.”

According to him, the proposed Russia-2018 team would consist of players, who play for the national team, and would be coached by Capello.

Asked whether it was feasible to form such team, Capello said that “This is a very beautiful, but utopian idea.”

The Russian national squad experienced a string of setbacks over the past decade failing to qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany and 2010 championship in South Africa to the great dismay of the Russian football fans.

Things changed, however, when Italian phenomenon Capello took over the team as the head coach and managed to help the Russian national squad to qualify for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

The team, however, failed to clear the first stage of the much-anticipated global tournament putting their coach in the center of stern criticism and raising serious concerns in the country about the team’s performance in the next World Cup, which would be hosted by Russia in 2018.

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.

Following an official ceremony held in September 2012 and attended by FIFA President Sepp 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.