No doubt a world cup wakes up a lot of passion and craziness in millions of people around the world. There are 78 days until the tournament begins in Russia and we know all the countries that will be playing in the tournament. However, what we maybe do not know, are these details about the organization and the logistics.
Russia won the right to host the World Cup eight years ago. There were other European countries which placed bids for the hosting rights such as Belgium, Netherlands and Spain, Portugal which placed a bid together, and England placed a bid for standing alone.
Netherlands and Belgium received two votes, Spain and Portugal received 7 votes and Russia received 13 votes; and then, it was announced that Russia won the honor to host this event. But, the decision was controversial and remains so to this day.
There will be 32 teams which will take part in the competition.14 national teams will represent the European zone, five teams from the African zone, five from South America, five from Asia, and three from the North America zone.
World Cup’s importance
The World Cup is the biggest sporting event ever in football, and obviously, it needs lots of helpers that will be assisting in the process of managing and introducing the competition when it begins. The organizers are planning to include about 20,000 people who will take part in the program and will become volunteers for the different kind of activities inside and outside of the stadiums and touristic regions.
Russia's sports minister said the logo was inspired by Russia's rich artistic tradition and its history of bold achievement and innovation. Previous FIFA’s president, Joseph Blatter said, it reflected the heart and soul of Russia and was decorated with classic Russian colors.
Some logistics stuff
Initially, in 2014, Russia wanted to use 16 stadiums in 13 host cities for the World Cup.
Nevertheless, it will have 11 host cities and 12 stadiums and many of them will be constructed especially for the final competition. Others will be renovated to meet FIFA's requirements, but the main stadium will be Luzhniki, in Moscow, because it will host the final match.
In the same way, Zabivaka, who is the official World Cup's mascot, and who was created by Ekaterina Bocharova, was selected in an online competition in which people around the world voted for several options.
It is a cute smiling wolf who plays soccer and has the mission of entertaining all the fans and guests in the different cities and stadiums during the championship.
This will be the first World Cup since 2006 to be hosted in Europe. It took 12 years for a tournament like this to happen in Europe again. The reason why it took so long was that FIFA likes to rotate hosting rights among continents. Japan and Korea in 2002, Germany in 2006, South Africa in 2010 and Brazil in 2014 were the previous hosts. it is done this way so that FIFA can take the joy of the game across the whole world. Qatar is the host country of the next World Cup in 2022.