Yekaterinburg is totally ready to host the world football championship of 2018. Russia’s Sports Minister and Chairman of Russia 2018 Coordination Committee Vitaly Mutko named five cities that are prepared to host this large-scale sports event, the Governor’s PR Department reports.

According to the minister, all of the thirteen candidate cities on the application list can be divided into three groups. The first group comprises cities that are fully prepared to host the World Cup 2018. These are: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Sochi, and Yekaterinburg. The second group comprises the cities that are ‘highly likely’ to be ready for the tournament: Krasnodar and Samara. The other five cities are in the ‘problem’ group. The cities that will not be selected as the hosting locations for the matches will be selected out of this group, actually. These are: Saransk, Volgograd, Yaroslavl, Kaliningrad, and Rostov-on-Don, fcp-press.ru reports.

The Urals’ capital has been recently tested for its readiness to host the championship when some qualification matches for the youth Euro Cup were held here. A few days ago, Russia’s national team defeated the players from Poland, had a draw with the Moldavian team and came first on the list, Lenta.ru says.