A new deadline for commissioning the Samara Arena stadium was named. Vice Premier Arkady Dvorkovich expressed his confidence that the football facility in Samara will be built before April 25 and will hold the first game on April 28. Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko reported that the arena will be commissioned on April 1, originally the stadium was planned to be completed in December 2017. At the same time, the FIFA inspection in March noted a serious lag in construction.

Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Organizing Committee "Russia-2018" Arkady Dvorkovich yesterday during a visit to Yekaterinburg told about the readiness of Russian stadiums for the World Cup. According to Mr. Dvorkovich, "even the problem stadium in Samara will be delivered on April 25". He added that the first test match in the new arena is scheduled for April 28.

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko during his February visit to Samara reported that the stadium "Samara Arena" would be ready for commissioning on April 1, 2018. Later there was official information that the object will be completed only by the end of April. Some media published information that the first test match at the Samara Arena, during which the Wings of the Soviets will play with the Voronezh Torch, scheduled for April 28, may be postponed to a later date due to the unavailability of the stadium. However, this information was not confirmed in the government of the region.

Representatives of FIFA, who visited the Samara Arena at the end of March, noted a serious lag in the construction of the facility. "Despite the progress achieved, we are seeing a significant backlog, there is still a huge amount of work to be done," said Colin Smith, director of the FIFA department for competitions and events. According to Kommersant's information, even after the Samara Arena is commissioned, about 70% of the stadium's internal premises will not be ready for operation. "The locker rooms of teams, a press center, a presidential box, skyboxes will be handed over. That is, those rooms, without which the holding of matches is impossible. Everything else will be finished later, "one of the officials in charge of the construction told Kommersant. According to the interlocutor of "Kommersant", difficulties can arise and at the stage of obtaining permission to put the facility into operation, since part of the engineering systems simply "does not correspond to the project". "There are serious questions on drainage systems, storm water drainage, power networks. They obviously do not match the project and they probably saved money, "he says. However, in his opinion, "the stadium will still be given up, but what to do with it after the World Cup is not clear."

Timing of the construction of the Samara stadium was postponed many times. Initially, the arena was to be delivered in December 2017, then the date was postponed until March of this year. Due to permanent delays, the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation filed a lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court regarding the general contractor for the construction of the stadium "Kazan". The amount of claims for the organization, which also deals with the construction of the stadium "Mordovia-Arena", is 1.2 billion rubles.

According to Mr. Dvorkovich, there is no single model for stadium management after the World Cup 2018. The Samara arena will become the venue for home matches of the "Wings of the Soviets", now playing in the second division - FNL. Once a popular team now can not boast of this. Average attendance of the Samara team after 30 rounds of the Football National League is 5 thousand spectators. Only three matches of this season have gathered an audience of over 7 thousand people. In addition, the region has to find means for maintaining the stadium. In the current year, the sports facility will remain in federal ownership. In 2019, the arena will be handed over to the region, but the operating expenses are planned to be co-financed from the federal budget, the Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov said. Earlier, the vice-governor of the Samara region, Alexander Fetisov, said that the regional government had already discussed the issue with the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation about the transfer of the stadium to the ownership of the region. This initiative provoked heated discussions in the Samara gubernia Duma. Deputies argued that the stadium would be too expensive to operate. According to Mr. Kolobkov, the maintenance of such an object can cost 200 million rubles. in year.

According to the chairman of the Samara City Football Federation Sergei Marushko, the loss of the "Samara Arena" can be minimized by using the arena as a venue for various large-scale events. "International experience shows that such large stadiums can function not only as football arenas. First of all, there you can hold concerts of world-class stars. Especially in the off-season, when the arena does not play matches. The functionality of the new stadium should be expanded by finding a football museum there and holding tournaments with international status on it, such as the "Volga Gate", for example. At the same time, "Wings of the Soviets" must solve more serious tournament tasks. It is clear that the FNL matches can not be collected for the matches, the team must at least fight for getting into the European Cups. In Samara, people love football, and the people will return to the stadium, if the "Wings of the Soviets" return the lost positions. If you want and competent leadership, the new stadium will not look lifeless, "Sergey Marushko is sure.